Earlier this year I was contacted by Jackie O’Donnell of Angel Gowns of Western New York, A charitable organisation in the USA that specialize in the manufacturing of bereavement apparel for stillborn infants.
She told me that they had a surplus of outfits that they would love to be distributed in South Africa. This was a perfect opportunity for our organisations to join in collaboration. The general public has long since asked us to supply more of our gowns to the government owned hospitals and with their surplus outfits we are now able to reach some government hospitals. Shortly thereafter they shipped the two boxes of outfits to us and earlier this week day arrived!
This felt like an eternity! It was held up at customs and then the tracking system somewhere went dead after it left customs. Eventually I found an outdated note in my postbox that there is one box ready for collection at our local post office. After arriving there and questioning where the other box is, it turned out that for some reason it had been shipped to another post box in a neighbouring city and so off I went with a bag of patience in hand. Finally I got the second box and both are now safely with us!
We are currently in talks with the hospitals to see how best to distribute these outfits. We give all credit of manufacturing of these outfits to AGWNY and their volunteers. With our local footprint and positive reputation in the baby death community, we are merely acting as facilitators to help them distribute their outfits within hospitals we are not yet able to accommodate.
We would like to give you all a huge and special thank you on behalf of every parent your outfits will be able to comfort in this saddest of times.
Eric Elronde and the TAGI team.