JCI Edinburgh has done a few days of volunteering at Smalls for All.

Smalls for All are based in a warehouse in Livingston.  They collect and distribute underwear to help women in Africa.  The help women and children in orphanages, slums, camps and schools as well as those in hospitals suffering form medical conditions like obstetric fistula.

Underwear in countries across Africa is very much a luxury and isn’t easily available.   Having a pair of pants can mean a young girl not missing a days of school because she has her period.

 Smalls for All have piles of donations piled high in their warehouse of parcels posted to the charity, these all have to be sorted and they only have a small number of volunteers to do so.  A group JCI Edinburgh members travelled out one Saturday afternoon to help them get through their donations.

We split into two groups one with the  crates of parcels, we opened the donations, checked for correspondence as each person who has donated is recorded and thanked by Maria, the CEO of Smalls.  We would sort donations into pants or bras which would also be sorted.

A group would then go through the opened donations of bras and size them to then be counted and some which are not suitable to be sent out to Africa.   Smalls for All need to keep track of their numbers which go out to the countries and how many are in the bags.

We volunteered for 4 hours, it soon flew by and we got through a good amount of donations, however there was still piles and piles of unopened donations.  it really is a fantastic charity which does amazing work and we would love to be back at a future date to help again.