Umbilo residents, Seralee Ignatuik and Melanie Norton, recently launched a stationery collection initiative for those who cannot afford to buy stationery for their children who start school on 18 January.
Many of the parents have lost their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic and hard lockdown, and others during the 2021 July unrest. Norton said the idea for this initiative came after she went to buy stationery for her daughter, who is in Grade 10, and realised that stationery prices have really gone up.”I was horrified by the prices and even the running around, thinking how the people are going to manage this and I just put it out there and asked if there were any parents who have old stationery they would be replacing that they would be willing to donate. That was what we initially started, by asking for used stationery from previous years, because a lot of parents just buy everything new. In a day we got people offering new stationery and it nobbled within a day,” said Norton.
So far the ladies have a list of 15 learners, most of them in primary school. Ignatuik said the turnout has been really amazing as they have received a lot of items, with some of the community members offering to buy stationery supplies for the entire year. “We also received a lot from a our local malls who gave us items at cost price, of which we used some of the cash donations we received. We have had local women-led businesses also contributing and a lot of the stuff has come from the Umbilo Warriors executive committee members and others donating on behalf of family that have passed, who have always been part of charity initiatives,” said Ignatuik.
She also said that in the first week they received a whole batch of uniform donations, case donations, pencils, crayons and many play items for babies which they will be donating to crèche learners in need. “We are still short of school bags, lunch boxes, books and juice bottles.” Ignatuik said what they have done is work off the stationery lists that were sent to them and have asked the community to donate whatever they can on the stationery list until they can make up the full list for each child. “We have been able to collect full lists for five of the learners and hopefully will have enough for the rest of the learners who have requested. We are still getting messages from the community, asking us what we still need and we are hoping that all the learners will have what they need before school opens,” said Ignatuik.
The pair said they would love to continue the initiative and to do it every term. “We had four Grade 4 learners who needed stationery and one of the ladies bought stationery for the entire year, which was pretty amazing. We have made a few deliveries to the homes and seeing the look in the parents’ and children’s eyes was amazing,” said Ignatuik. She said some of the items donated do need alterations and stitching to be done. “We have a few ladies in the community who have offered to assist with that, which is also amazing,” added Ignatuik. Anyone who would like to help can call 084-400-3811.
