Hey. Just wanted to let you know I got two more nappy packages that arrived today. One had been opened but it appears all was in tact as nothing that I can see was missing. I am thrilled for the cream also as we have one baby here who has TERRIBLE NAPPY rash and I was asked a week ago for this cream but of course, didn’t have any. G timing is perfect.

I have now been getting requests since I have returned for these packages as word has gotten out that they have been arriving. Also found out that some went to a local Women’s shelter while I was gone so they are getting into the hands that are needing them. Yeah… I will distribute these items this week to a couple of poorer families.

Love to you and thank you for all that you do. Love,

I just thought some of you might like to see the response we’re getting in Russia. I’m sorry that I have to remove names to help keep our parcels and Russian friends safe.

On our front here, I have been a bit distracted by baby stuff and my other charity work. The charity office that shares my house is moving out next week, which will mean I have enough room to spread out the nappies (which have now been moved here) and get the remaining packages sent!

I have also been unable to check the nappiesforrussia email address. Apologies to anyone who has been trying to get in touch with me this way. I should be able to respond now shortly. Thanks everyone!

Well we have still been packing and posting away here, I think we’re up to 33 parcels sent now. some have arrived (all intact, yay!) others are still on the seas….

2 big announcements:
1: The first round of the nappies for Russia auctions raised about $993 dollars (including postage money paid.)!! Brilliant, that sends about 30 packages!

2: More auctions to come next month!

Even better, we can now finally announce that we have received enough donated items for the appeal! WOOT!
(I can’t believe I used that word, that’s my sister’s word. oh well, too late now.)

To all those who have donated, a HUGE thank you. To those who have emailed offering more, thank you so much for your generosity, but at this stage we do not need any more nappies.

If situations change (if we find, for instance, that in the end we have too much of one type and not enough of others) we will change the website to reflect this.)

HOWEVER, we are still very keen to accept items of value for auction next month, please contact me if you have something to donate for this purpose.

That’s all for now folks.

actually, I thought of one more thing….

If anyone in Brisbane has a few hours to come and help me do some parcelling and posting, PLEASE get in touch and I’d be so glad of your help! nicole@therapydogs.org.au

The comments page on this site goes to webmail that I rarely get a minute to check, so this email address above is better.

THANKS ALL!

As a result, more parcels were mailed this week, with more on the way soon.

We also got some EXCELLENT news that our newborn loan packs have arrived in Russia, safe and sound without any tampering or tariffs!

We have been asked to send some more newborn items to the local maternity and children’s hospitals as well by the woman who received the newborn packages for distribution. This is just a great opportunity!

I must sincerely thank all those who bid on auction items and especially the stores that donated items for us to auction. Without you we wouldn’t be able to send the rest of our items!

Just go to that site and have a look around! All of our items’ titles start with “Nappies for Russia”. To see all our items, click on “all products” on the left hand menu and scroll down until you reach our store.

We have nappies, wetbags, slings, custom spots etc. Some new, some used, and some unavailable anywhere else!

This is the time when we hope to raise much needed cash for postage money. Any item sold will make a difference.

Why don’t you check it out now!

Ok, so we will still need some more once some items are sold for postage money, but we are basically there!

Just to clarify what is still needed, and not:

-We will still need a few nappies, but until sales have been sorted out we won’t know how many or what type - more info can be provided later.

-we are just short a few creams and PUL covers (it says we have more than enough on the table, but this includes a good number of very newborn sizes so we need a few more small or mediums with bigger size ranges.)

-We are a few snappis short

-We are now most desperately needing postage money!

I am tempted to say that we are no longer needing terries (flats) however I won’t do that; what I will say is that perhaps if you were plannign on sending in terries just hold off for the next update as we have seriously run out of room and most of that is terry flats, which are great, but actually relatively heavy to send. I will let people know via this site if I still need terries after the final sales and then you can decide whether or not to send them in. (If you’ve already put some in the post - don’t worry!)

I was just so excited about (Basically) reaching our target I had to post.

Once again a huge thank you goes out to every single donor and volunteer!!! You should give yourselves a pat on the back!

We’ve done really well! Check out the progress page for the details - but basically, we’re just a hundred or so nappies short - and I’m pretty sure Perth’s collection alone could take care of that! We’re all good for boosters, snappis, pins etc, and so many lovely people have sent in fleece that i’m having a fleece cut up day tomorrow which should take care of all the liners!! yay! (I’ll update later if it turns out the fleece doesn’t go as far as I expected.)

So for now, the only things we really still need are:
-creams
-PUL covers - just a few more and we’ll be there!
-Wool/Fleece covers - we have exactly the number we need now - Hooray! BUT this includes a lot of very dodgy $4 fleece covers which are ok, but i’d love to send stuff that might last a bit longer - so please do keep on sending in the wool and good quality fleece wraps etc.
-Items for auction specifically
-Donations of cash for postage!! This is obviously the most urgent need now, as expected. We have got a lot of items for auction so we should get there in the end.

Please keep an eye out for an auction soon, we’ll post details here when we’re nearly ready.

As our packages have all so far been a bit too heavy, I’ve done some weighing and thinking. A terry weighs 150g give or take, and since that’s the bulk of what we’ll be sending, I’ve decided that any nappy which weighs more than about 165g will go for auctioning first, and will only be sent if it’s not sold. (This EXCLUDES items which the donors asked us not to sell, please be assured.) This means that there will be quite a lot of great quality, nice heavy (meaning absorbent) modern cloth nappies for sale in our auction. It will definitely be worth a look for those cloth nappy enthusiasts (and those yet to be converted from disposables!!)

Thanks again everyone!

I hope everyone out there had a lovely Christmas break!

I”ve just updated our progress table but to be honest I’ve lost count on a lot of stuff, plus the table includes items for sale so it’s hard to judge exactly what will be available to send, but hey!

I THINK we are ok for creams now, we will be a bit short on snappis still (anticipating a few from interstate) and I think we are still probably looking for more wool, fleece and PUL covers. Liner fleece has rolled on in (Thanks to Maz, Cass and Cat mostly!) but as I haven’t cut it up yet I have NO IDEA how many liners we have or need yet. Hopefully I’ll get that attended to today!

I am excited that the interstate collection courier has been sponsored by Australian Air Express and stuff from Melbourne, Sydney and Perth should arrive this week. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s in these parcels! Other drop offs will be posted if needed - interstate coordinators - I’ll contact you today - thanks for your patience!

On a slightly less positive note - the parcels we sent recently (15) cost $470 to mail!! What’s worse though is that our packages were heavier than the required 2kg max so the post office worker just started pulling stuff out willy nilly and the parcels got rather mixed up. Never mind, these were all going to the same place, and we are sending the extra stuff that got removed to make them up again, but the poor Russian workers on the other end will have to play mix and match a bit! From now on we will pre-weigh our parcels, and we might have to keep more of the heavy fitted nappies here for auction.

Lastly, now that interstate collections are closed off we will be saying goodbye to the lovely Mel who has been SO wonderful helping me out to organise so much stuff. She will be taking a well deserved break to look after herself and her growing family. Thanks so much Mel, I couldn’t possibly express how helpful you’ve been!

Thanks for all your support everyone - we’re getting closer!

I’ve now got a better idea of what we’re going to need, so I’ll put the call out there for more microfleece and more woolen or good quality fleece covers. Most of our fleece covers will be the acrylic pull up style ones, or the $4 covers with pvc from big W (we remove the pvc). Neither of these have a good size range and all will only last a few months of washing, so we really need to get some better covers in. Hopefully that will happen soon!

I have decided to finalise what we will send, and adjust the progess table accordingly. So yes, the numbers needed have gone up slightly. We will be sending:
-100 nappy packs for mums
-10 newborn “loan packs” (with the same things in them as the mum’s packs, except only a sample of cream, newborn sized nappies (or flanelette flats) and 3 covers as newborns tend to soil their covers so often.)
-Pvc pants, training pants and big bedwetter AIO’s are going separately to the orphanages.
-We have already sent a “demo pack’ to an influential community member (with a baby son) to show the local women and this contained the same as a mum’s pack, but is an extra.
-We have a number of nappies that are to be sold rather than sent due to either exceedingly long drying times, heavy weights or being donated specifically for the purpose. So far, these have been counted in amongst the nappies received but as they are to be sold they don’t really “count” towards how many we need. However for the moment, until we know how many we will need to sell for postage money, they are being included in the total received.

Thanks to everyone who has donated this week - it’s been great!

Unfortunately in the mass of my mental confusion, we lost track of how many nappies we have collected - just the flats. I put the stuff I had already washed (and therefore counted) in a separate section to the new stuff that arrived, but as some new flats were already washed by their donors bringing them on the day, and we were folding up flats then and there - I put them into the already counted file and forgot! D’oh!

Anyway, I have guessed (fairly accurately I think) the number we have now and have updated the progress page to 750 nappies collected! On the day we had an even 250 flats, not counting the ones brought in near the end of the day - so we did really well!

I was completely exhausted, but it would have been much more ridiculously impossible without the lovely ladies from Essential Baby and KYB who came to help - thanks all!

We got 4 newborn packs sorted and packaged - these will go out on loan to new mothers just before their babies are due - then they will return them at 8 weeks to exchange for a permanent pack for older babies. This will hopefully mean that newborns won’t have to wear stuff that’s far too bulky for them. We did these first as a priority as we feel that preventing nappy rash in the newborns will be really helpful for them as they get into the older baby packages which we’ll send as soon as we can. We hope to do another 6 newborn packs. We cut out over 100 fleece liners for the terry flats on thursday as well, on top of assembling all 100 pea pods, stretching 180ish Snappies (OUCH!) and removing all the excess packaging from nappy creams. We also got the large sized AIO’s, PVC pants and training pants sent off to the orphanages for bedwetters and semi-toilet trained children. These can be put to use straight away with existing rags/nappies while we sort out how many nappies they want to accept and what sizes etc. There are lots of logistics involved when there’s so many kids in each orphanage.

Now that the first volunteering day is over, I’m just taking it a bit more easy - trying to do a few loads of washing per week, rather than a few a day like last week! Please note that in order to reduce my workload, amongst other things, we have limited slightly the things we accept. We no longer need training pants, any items containing pvc or nappy boosters (unless they come with a specific nappy that you are donating) as we have heaps of these now. We are also cutting back on accepting knitting wool for the time being just so there’s one less thing to count/sort - but we will take it again later in all likelihood.

We are clearly going to have to have some more working bees to get this sorted - maybe on a smaller scale however! I’m happy to hear from anyone in Brisbane who could help me out for a few hours - even if it’s just with doing a load of washing or entertaining my bub while I try to get some sorting done!

Thanks a lot everyone! Keep up the good work!

What a job! I’m NOT looking forward to my electricity bill!

Thanks so much to Kate, Mandy, Sue, Sherry and ALL our lovely interstate volunteers for doing so much washing for me. You’re all brilliant people!

Check the progress table for updates - but basically - we did well today! There were a heap of prefolds and PUL covers from Real Nappies NZ - so many I didn’t have time to count them all! Plus HUGE packages from Greenkids pocket nappies, including heaps of fleece to cut up which is brilliant as we were short on liners.

Thanks everyone - you’re too numerous to list you all but you know who you are!