SWAP: Scarves With A Purpose at the University of Michigan

Fall 2010-What We’ve Been Up To! | November 8, 2010

Here is the update!

In the beginning of the year, I went to Delonis with David and  Ayiba to talk to the director and the volunteer coordinator about how to form a relationship with them and how to get to know the homeless community better. They agreed to set up an educational panel for the SWAP members and talk about the cycle of homelessness and the ways we can help them out.

We have also set up a Friday afternoon (about twice a month) event where we go to Glacier Hills Nursing Home in Ann Arbor and knit with some residents there! We had our first trip there and have another coming up on Nov. 19. Val, Sam, and I went and it was a ton of fun! The ladies were sassy and happy we were there.

Bethany is managing the star scarf chart well

Circle K is joining efforts with us–they brought along a bunch of knitters to make some scarves, and we also have shifts during their 24 hour service day on Nov. 13 and 14. We will help knitters from 7-9 pm, 9-11 pm, and 3-5 am.

We are attempting to get people to sign up on the WWFF website, but it’s not really working.

Jordan, Bethany, and Jessica created a t-shirt for us! We will be ordering it soon. It will cost about $15 and proceeds will go to yarn for the club.

Jordan is trying to start an official U of M SWAP website.

Sam has sent letters to 10 more yarn places asking for donations…we have yet to hear from them.

Taylor has been doing a great job with MSA and LSA funding and going to info sessions about how to apply for funding. On the same note, Andrew is fantastic with reimbursing me for yarn and helping out when needed.

We switched the meetings to be 9-11 every other week and 9-9:30 the other weeks. We will see how it works (the first 30 minute meeting is this upcoming Tuesday).

Still finding places to donate to…either 150 to the Tumaini Center or all of them to the Denby Center in Detroit.

Applied for the Ginsberg mini-grant but didn’t get any money. Applied for the LSA funding and got $150. Applied for EQ Hall gov’t funding and got $500!!

Jill and Sam did a fantastic job of facilitating the meeting one week.

Keegan and Michael have been researching homelessness/poverty info very well and present it almost every week (don’t present when there aren’t many people there). We have had some great discussions from this information.

Liz created a Ctools site for SWAP! Keegan and Emily helped me add names to it. Now all  we need to do is update the site…

Liz’s dad thought of a great idea to ask alumni for funding. We will be sending out letters for that soon hopefully.

We will start collecting $5 dues next semester…sad, but necessary.

We are in the process of collecting yarn from people who have taken some but aren’t knitting…it’s working (kinda) but not too well.

I am going to try to make a binder by the end of the year or semester (?) detailing all the ways SWAP is run (funding, donation places, how meetings are run, etc.) so the load is lifted off me and other people can take over in the future and once we graduate.

SWAP WAS IN THE MICHIGAN DAILY!

Those are the highlights for now!

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