Our 9th World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKIP) was held on Saturday 13th June. Our theme this year was “Warm hands warm hearts”. With this year’s theme in mind, we made fingerless gloves before WWKIP and during.   We had over 45 participants throughout the day who knitted or crocheted, sewed in ends, socialised and met new people. We had plenty of food, lucky doors prizes for all. We also had some participants from Sacred Harp Group during their breaks from singing.

We had guest speaker Andrea Zilberman – Kogo Community Education Liaison. https://www.kogo.org.au/.  Andrea give us the Story of Kogo. It was a particularly cold winter in Melbourne in 2004 and there was a sudden resurgence in the popularity of knitting scarves. During this time, Ros Rogers had the idea of getting her friends and family to direct their knitting energy towards knitting for charity (after all how many scarves can one person wear?). This resulted in 180 scarves being knitted which were then distributed by the Emerald Hill Mission to those experiencing homelessness.

The following year Ros officially launched Knit One Give One (KOGO) as a not-for-profit organisation. Ros and her team of volunteer knitters then decided to knit scarves and beanies for disadvantaged children, and these items were distributed to schools supported by the Ardoch Youth Foundation. Publicity in the local press led to an overwhelming response and before we knew it, KOGO had grown to have over 200 volunteer knitters and more than 2,000 finished items, now expanded to include clothing for babies and children, blankets and toys.

Recognising a widespread need for winter woollies for people undergoing hardship KOGO decided to team up with a number of community partner organisations to distribute the donated knitted items.

KOGO has continued to grow exponentially and developed into the major charity it is today. Each year, KOGO distributes over 100,000 items to the most vulnerable people in our community. If you would like more information on Kogo here is the link to their website include Christmas Angel program. https://www.kogo.org.au/.

From the photo below you can see the variety of knitting and crocheted items that were donated to Kogo.  We have been given some large knitted squares which we will join to make blankets and donate to Kogo.  If you can help join the squares, please let Myself or Leanne know.

Thank you to all who helped setup for our event, helped cleaning up, brought food to share.  It was a great day and we are looking forward to next year’s WWKIP which will be our 10th.

Natalie Papworth, Olive Pesto coordinator
first published in the July Olive Branch