Angel Gown® garments are exquisitely handcrafted bereavement or funeral gowns made from donated wedding gowns and formal dresses for infants who are born sleeping, or do not survive an illness, or are born premature and do not make their journey home from the hospital.

The bereaved families have already paid too great a price. For us, it is therefore an absolute privilege to freely donate Angel Gown® garments to hospitals and organisations in our network. They play a crucial part in distributing Angel Gown® garments to bereaved families at no financial costs.

We have formal agreements with both Mediclinic and Netcare to systematically distribute our Angel Gown® garments in all of their hospitals throughout Southern Africa. We do welcome other hospital groups as well.

We are not trained, nor set up to, deal with individuals and bereaved families going through this terrible time of loss. As such, we do not take any special requests. If you suffer a loss in a hospital that is not yet part of our network, the hospital manager can contact us via email at info@tagi.co.za to enquire if we will be able to provide assistance in time.

Firstly, our sincere thanks for considering donating to The Angel Gown® Initiative. The good you are doing is immeasurable and every donation is deeply appreciated. Please send an email to info@tagi.co.za with your name, contact details and the area in which you are situated. We will try our best to contact you within 72 hours to make arrangements on how to proceed with your donation. If you have not received any contact within this time period we kindly ask that you enquire with us again.

To ensure TAGI donors feel confident with our process, all donations are thoroughly documented. This includes taking pictures on receipt of donated garments, documenting the amount of Angel Gown® garments repurposed and recording which hospitals have received finished Angel Gown® garments. We do our best to post a public Thank-You on our socialmedia pages and website. We also provide pictures of the donated gown and, eventually, pictures of the final repurposed Angel Gown® garments. If you are interested in knowing the status of your gown, you are welcome to contact us and we can track your donation and its progress on our tracking system.

While organizing everyone’s information, unpacking, working with the donated gowns and filling our hospitals requests, it may take between 12 and 18 months for your dress to make it into the hands of a seamstress. Unfortunately we are currently in a great need for volunteers. This is a very delicate process and we appreciate your generosity and patience.

All wedding gowns and formal dresses, be it a skirt and top combo or a one-piece gown, are welcome regardless of size, design, age or condition.

Types of fabrics that are traditionally used for wedding and formal gowns work best, such as all forms of silks, satins, charmeuse, taffeta and lace. For the lining anything in cotton, rayon, pongee and taffeta-lining are welcome. For trim we welcome all forms of chiffon, organza, lace, ribbon, beads etc.

The colours most sought after are all forms of white, cream, ivory and those neutral types. Muted shades such as lavender, pastel green, blue, pink, soft yellow etc are also very popular.

If you have a gown or fabric you wish to donate but are uncertain, please feel free to contact us directly via email at info@tagi.co.za with pictures attached and we will be glad to assess it and proceed from there.

We do appreciate every donation received, but as we work closely with our network of hospitals we know which hospitals are in greater need of Angel Gown® garments. TAGI therefore does not direct donations to specific hospitals but rather those hospitals with the greater need.

So far we have had no need for our donors to alter their gowns in any way, but upon making contact and assessing the type of donation we will be able to give you further instructions from there.

It does help us streamline the repurposing process if donated garments are cleaned before we receive it, but it is not compulsory. Usually these types of garments need to be dry-cleaned, but it is often possible to wash them on a gentle/delicate machine cycle or by hand to protect the delicate fabrics and then have them air-dry.

It is important to note that sometimes garments are so heavily stained or damaged that we are not always able to use the complete gown. We do however try to use as much of it as possible and we often mix parts of different garments in order to yield a bigger number of Angel Gown® garments from our donations.

We appreciate and respect that this gown is a very special gown to you and you are more than welcome to keep a piece of it. Upon making contact please raise this question with us and we will instruct you on how to proceed with removing a piece of your wedding gown to best protect the rest of the gown for donation to TAGI.

Thank you for your consideration, here is a list of other resources/sponsors we need:

Other materials for the repurposing process:

• 6mm wide double satin ribbon in white and cream is most needed. A total of 80cm is stitched into the back of each Angel Gown® for closure. Other types of ribbon are also welcome; if we can’t use it for tie backs, it will be used as trim.
• Stitching cottons in white and cream is most needed. Brands that work best and which are most needed for the Angel Gown® garments are Coats, Gütermann, Mettler, Polycore and Seralon. Of course, all other brands are welcome and if they aren’t suitable for machine sewing, they will be used for hand sewing.
• Stitching needles; Schmetz Microtex in sizes 8, 10 and 12 are perfect.

Materials for packaging:

Angel Gown® garments, dependent on the requirement, are either individually packaged or presented free to hospitals in larger packs to assist with storage and space limitations:

• 15mm – 20mm wide satin ribbon in pastel pink (for girls) and pastel blue (for boys) are used for wrapping the completed garment before packaging, using a total of 1.3m per Angel Gown®.
• 190mm x 250mm + 25mm resealable cellophane envelopes for packing available from Merrypak and PNA.
• 25mm x 19mm self-adhesive rectangular stickers (the brand we use is Tower) to colour code the different sizes. We use the following colours; bottle green, orange, purple and bright yellow. If you wish to assist with these please contact us for colour samples.
• 305mm x 420mm ziplock bags are used to hold together 1 full starter set (8 Angel Gown® garments).
• Depending on the amount of sets we ship to a hospital, boxes (available at Box-It) in the following sizes are required:
  • 300mm x 230mm x 300mm
  • 400mm x 270mm x 75mm

Other services:

• A great deal of colour printing and paperwork is required for our initiative. A print sponsorship would be of immense help. Printing work currently needed includes the following:
  • Every Angel Gown® is folded around an A5 condolence card that also includes a handwritten message for the parents.
  • For public awareness we have A4 posters that are handed out at establishments for public display, as well as folded pamphlets for individual use.
• Although we do our best to market The Angel Gown® Initiative as far and wide as we can, people with marketing skills or connections to the media would also be greatly appreciated to help us spread the word. The more donations and volunteers we receive, the more families we will be able to help.

For more information go to https://tagi.co.za/donation/#help

We appreciate gift cards such as the none-shop-specific debit cards available at most malls as they are easier to use at different suppliers. Donors are welcome to contact us for a list of frequently used suppliers should they wish to donate a gift card specific to an individual supplier.

We also appreciate any monetary donation you are able to part with. As a registered PBO we are allowed to issue Section 18A Certificates for tax purposes. Our banking details are:

Bank: FNB
Account type: Cheque
Account number: 62758360269
Branch: Somerset Mall
Branch code: 200912

• We would like to set up a network of volunteers with sewing experience who would consider donating their time in helping with the repurposing process.
• If you don’t own a sewing machine or don’t know how to sew, there are still several other skills that go into the creation of Angel Gown® garments we can teach you. This includes dismantling the garments, cutting Angel Gown® garments panels, followed by hand sewing and/ or beading. All this needs to happen before our seamstresses get to stitch it all together – Helderberg area are only.
• For those that are not sewing-inclined, as the initiative grows we will also be needing people to help assist with the wrapping and packing process – Helderberg area only.
• Although we do our best to market The Angel Gown® Initiative as far and wide as we can, people with marketing skills or connections to the media would also be greatly appreciated to help us spread the word. The more donations and volunteers we receive, the more families we will be able to help.
• If you find yourself with a skill set that is not listed here, but would like to assist us, please feel free to contact us. As our list of needs are already so extensive we only listed the support that we need on a regular basis, but there are many other areas with which we need help and would appreciate assistance.

For more information go to https://tagi.co.za/donation/#help

We have two production lines, each one dedicated to manufacturing boy Angel Gown® garments and girl Angel Gown® garments respectively.

Although our Angel Gown® garments are just a small token to lighten the burden, they are in high demand. We can currently only provide them to families in need of a burial gown. There are so many hospitals and organisations we would still like to assist with their demand and are heartbroken to inform you that we simply do not have enough stock to supply you with a gown at this moment. We urge your friends to seek grief counseling with their closest The Compassionate Friends chapter – an international charitable organisation that specialize in supporting parents suffering the loss of a child.