For those of you coming to Sticks N Stitches in Columbus next month don’t forget about our charity. 🙂 Touching Little Lives is a local charity that provides items for stillbirths, preemies and young children undergoing surgery. I have posted a portion of their mission below:
Every eight seconds a baby is born. Every hour four babies die. Birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality. One in five infant deaths is due to birth defects. Every two minutes a low birth weight baby is born. Every year more than 5,500 babies are born weighing less than one pound. Every minute a baby is born to a teen mother. One in nine infants is born preterm – less than 37 weeks gestation. The U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than 24 other nations.*
Our mission is to ‘touch the little lives’ of needy premature and newborn infants in Ohio, to do all that we can to give them, free of any charge, the necessities that every newborn needs. Our volunteers hand make quilts, blankets, caps, booties, gowns, undershirts, afghans, bibs, sleepers, and other articles as well as provide diapers, hygiene products, formula and bottles when possible.
Unfortunately there is one additional need that we sadly meet within our communities. Our volunteers provide burial layettes to families whose angel has been called to join its Heavenly Father.
Each year literally hundreds upon hundreds of premature and needy babies are admitted to our local Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU). The extremely small size of many of these infants makes it difficult to find clothing that fits, and when it can be found, is often beyond the affordable range of many families. Every item which we provide is completely free of charge and no one in our organization receives any salary or compensation for their work. Every penny donated is spent on providing for these little lives. This is truly a charity of the heart, our reward being the personal satisfaction of helping those too young and fragile to help themselves.
In addition to providing clothing and necessity items to newborns, we also make and provide neonatal positioning devices (snuggles, snakes and frogs) to area hospitals as well as surgery dolls and stuffed animals. The positioning devices are used in the NICU to support the many tubes and monitoring devices often attached to the newborns. Our surgery dolls are used by doctors and nurses to draw on and graphically explain to a young child about their pending surgery. This helps the child understand what he or she is about to undergo. This doll is then given to the child, something to hold on to during the stressful hospital stay and something to take with when they are finally able to return home. We make stuffed animals and these are provided to various area agencies and emergency rooms. Having something soft to cling to during a time of stress can do much to ease the trauma of a young child.
If you would be interested in becoming a part of Touching Little Lives, or would like further information about what you can do, visit their “How You Can Help” page.
Many of the knitted items take little to no time at all to knit up and can help you eat up that stash you are trying to decrease this month. I have provided some useful links below. Please bring your items with you to the game. I will collect them there and then deliver them to one of their local coordinators.
