Can you Help? SCKC '09

URGENT ........ KIDS OF VICTORIA Bush Fires need your help!

Hi,

 

ETA 18/02/09 Another 76 to add to our growing tally! Thanks Tracey and Sharon!!!

 

I drafted a happy letter to send out to you to say Thanks for your wonderful contribution to SCKC, we have reached our target for 2009 through your incredible support, I still want you to know how much we appreciate your support but with the awful disaster that has hit our fellow Aussies in Victoria i have an URGENT appeal for the Children that are suffering so very much, I read an email from a yahoo site, Karen Rogers is urgently asking for craft items for the children to make kits, they are severely traumatized and professionals involved in their care are of the belief that they need to channel their distress via drawing and craft creation.........Please read below and see if their is any goodies in your stash you may be willing to donate, I am happy to receive stuff and send it off or you can email or post to Karen direct......PLEASE HELP, these children are every bit as deserving as the kids of SCKC...

 

Hugs

Jules x

 

.... An excerpt from Karens email......

 

Hi Ladies

.....I have been keeping in very close touch with my best friend who is a Manager for a Community Support and Counseling centre in NE Victoria, and she has been, for their organization, in charge of co-coordinating support and counselling for many of the children who have been horrendously affected by this disaster. She is a specialist Child support worker and child psychologist, and I talked with her late tonight about the children and how they are doing, and the various thoughts that have been suggested here on Stamphappy. I in no way want to detract from the wonderful sentiments and suggestions by any of you girls, because I truly believe that at the right time, gifts of stamping/scrapbooking supplies will be incredibly treasured and gratefully received by all or some of the victims.

 

Tonight however, Kath talked to me about the need to meet some needs of the children, and how children have a need to be busy in the face of trauma and disaster - or at least have the wherewithal to do so when they feel a need to. This might mean several hours a day for them, or could even just be 15 mins. at a time. Particularly for girls, but also for boys, they have a need to create as this is a very integral way of expressing their emotions and feelings, and very much is a coping mechanism for them. She explained
to me that while at this time, crafting is not going to be any kind of a priority for the parents, for all the very valid and critical reasons Kath H. shared with us, on the other hand, it could and would be a huge help for the children right now.

 

We talked at length, and with her input and thought and professional understanding firsthand of what they are dealing with in terms of helping the children to work through their own trauma, and have the needs to do so, I promised her that I would do what I could to focus some giving particularly on the children in this respect, and she will ensure that it gets to the children individually.

So.I am humbly seeking your help in any way, big or small to enable us to touch the lives of these dear young children (and others maybe not so young, as there are young teenagers in there as well) Any donations you might be able to round up would be gratefully accepted and appreciated. Anything will go to creating fun and interesting kits for these children. Stamp Pads - dye ink only at this time as they won't need adult supervision to utilise them, cardstock, papers, glue, double sided tape, pens, pencils, markers, stickers, rub-on's, scissors, cutting mats, cutters, stamps, embellishments, brown paper bags with handles for kits( I have some already and will buy some more, ribbons, cords, punches..anything at all would be ever so much appreciated. I have begun to put some bags together with my stuff, and hope that you might be able to help me put together a substantial number of kits so that we can hopefully make enough to cover all the children (approx 300). At this point, I am not real sure how many children are
affected..but Kath tells me it is lots and they have been run off their feet this week counselling and supporting the kids.

I will be going to Melbourne to see her in 3 weeks, and would love to fill suitcases with kits to give her, and she will ensure they get distributed to the kids. I will happily pay excess baggage if I need to , to get them all to her - now I am thinking positive J!!!!

If you can donate anything at all, it will all go to help these beautiful children who have so many needs, both physical and material, but also
emotional at this time.

My address is for donations is: PO Box 75, Campbell Town. Tasmania 7210

kdrogers07@bigpond.com

 

 I realise that 3 weeks doesn't leave a whole lot of time to pull this together, but please, at least think about whether you can help. If
donations come in after the 3 weeks, I will continue to put the kits together and undertake to send them on to Kath each time I have 10 ready to

go.

Thankyou for reading this far, and thankyou for caring, as we all do, for all the victims of this tragic situation.

Optimistically preparing to help in the small way I can..please join me.

Smiles and hugs

Karen Rogers

Hope from the ashes......

Tragic, incomprehensible, senseless.... three words that spring to mind when I think of the awful tragedy that has befallen our fellow Aussies living in Rural Victoria. However Hope is a feeling that is beginning to take shape, Sarah Gladman has a wonderful way of being able to reach out our hand to those that have lost so much.....

.......Sarah has put out the call to our wonderfully generous scrapping community, Sarah  is asking for scrapbookers to donate a 12 x 12 inch almost completed scrapbook layout to the “Memory Gifts” program. Sarah's plan is that  families devastated by fire will (in time) be given album pages to help them begin their memories again. Those families can then approach their own families for copies of photos to put into the albums, or simply start putting in fresh memories.

You can read all about the Memory Gifts program at Sarah's Blog HERE. 

So many of you have risen to the call for the precious kids of SCKC, so many that we have already gone past our 2009 target.I know that many of you will want to do everything you can and extend that same generous and open hearted reaction to the SCKC plea for memory album pages to Sarah's Appeal. Please head over to her blog and check out what you can do to begin to help heal those who have suffered so much loss  in the Victorian Bush Fires.....

We live in the bush behind Wollongong and have had several close calls with fires over the past 14 years, however that fear and feeling of helplessness we experienced comes nowhere near the horror of Feb 7th. The loss of life, of homes, of carefree innocence is something we couldn't begin to comprehend unless we had been there. As scrapbookers though we know the intrinsic importance of photos, of memorabilia that tells others of our milestones, our achievements & our family events.

We hold our precious albums close to our hearts and I know myself like many of you would grab our albums and hard drives immediately after ensuring our families safety, sadly many of those that managed to flee could only carry themselves and there loved ones to safety.....leaving their precious photos & memorabilia to the hungry flames.... Please help if you can....

God Bless & Thank You again

Jules X 

6314 and counting!!

WOW! WOW! WOW!

THANK YOU ALL SO VERY MUCH!

Today we received another bundle of LO's that has pushed our frog into the black! We have now received a staggering 6314 LO's for the abused and needy children of SCKC!

A big Thanks to Yvette & her 6yr old daughter, Elizabeth, L Mercer and Cheryl J.......along with many many scrappers in our wonderful community (and from all over the world) you have contributed to ensuring that over 315 Children in Australia and NZ will receive the gorgeous Memory books that they deserve!

For us it is hard to imagine our children growing up with no photos of their achievements, their birthdays, special holidays or even simply their smiling cheeky little faces. For the children who attend SCKC that was their reality, shuffled throughout our welfare system, photos and memorabilia of their childhood were never paramount to their quality of lives. For us, we understand all to well the value of photos, of journaling and a beautiful backdrop......Thanks to all of us, these children will now have stunning albums to anchor not only their precious childhood memories but that will become a physical representation of their hopes & dreams for a better future.

I have said it before but will repeat it again, last year at the SCKC Illawarra goodbye concert, an 11 year old Girl ran up to me, she had only ever seen me behind the lense and was unaware of why her photograph continued to be taken throughout the week......she  threw her arms around me and with tears in her eyes, she Thanked me for her book and desperately tried to articulate as no other child I had ever seen, even to the point of promising me,  that she wouldn't waste her life, that she would become someone worthy, that her book was now so important and would remind her that she was worth something to somebody! From that moment on I knew I would endeavor to do everything I could to ensure that abused & often unwanted little girls and boys like her who attended SCKC would continue to receive these precious books that although tiny in size were so big in these kids hearts and minds.

THANKS to you that dream, that wish to do everything in my power of helping all of these kids through NZ & Australia is now a reality, so as you go about your lives and tend to your own families, don't ever doubt that you do indeed make a difference and have made an enormous impact on the hearts and minds of lots of little people you may never meet!

If your still unsure, head to my last post (HERE) where some of the SCKC camp directors and several of the buddies who attended SCKC camps in Januray this year have left their comments of Thanks!

Please be assure that we will continue to gratefully accept LO's and goodies that you may still wish to donate, 2010 will be here before we know it and with a new year of SCKC camps, we will again be needing your help!

For now I plan on sorting the pages with books and embellishment kits for the remaining 5 camps of 2009.....I will update you all again soon

God Bless & Thanks so very much

Jules X