11/06/2023
Last year as a Guide leader I had the opportunity to work with the 3rd year Guides on a service project to complete requirements for their Lady Baden Powell service Award. The Guides partnered with an inner-city school to purchase every student in the school a brand new pair of pyjamas. These were given out the week before Christmas break so that everyone could participate in PJ day at school. Historically this school did not hold a traditional PJ day as the admin team was not sure if all students would have an appropriate pair of PJs to wear to school. Our 3rd year Guides did an amazing job reaching out to their networks and in the end, we exceeded the goal of 165 pairs, collecting 177 pairs in total. We held a wrapping party and each Guide brought an adult with them and over 3 hours, we wrapped every pair of PJs and then labelled them for each student. Part of the magic of this project is that we work with the principal to ensure that we have the correct size for every child, so when they open their gift, we know it's going to fit, not be too small or three sizes too big. Having been involved with many GG service projects over the years, this was by far my favourite as you could see the joy on the faces of the students when they were opening (thanks to the videos the teacher sent us) their gifts. We were told by the principal that the extra pairs were used over the course of the school year for families who needed a little extra community support.
Which brings us to this year.....the majority of our Guide leadership team from last year have retired or moved to a different unit. Thankfully Kathy Jones House reached out to the principal last month and asked if she would be interested in us doing this again; she was overwhelmed with gratitude and tears and said yes. After a few texts with some of my past leaders, we decided that we were going to take on this project ourselves with a goal of collecting 180 brand new pairs of PJs for the student community at St. Bernadette's Catholic School. Thus, The Pyjama Project was born!!
Attached you will find a wonderful poster designed by the fabulous Andrea Carter Simon created with details of our project. We have received class lists with specific sizing and we have included a link to our Sign Up genius where you can see gender and size that we need. We are asking for all donations to be dropped off to us by December 1st as we will be having our own wrapping party that weekend. If you would like to support us but live out of town or can't get your donation by December 1st, we have set up an email address that etransfers can be sent to and then we will do the shopping (if you decide to do this, please let me know so that I can keep an eye out for your etransfer).
Thank you for your consideration of this amazing project which is sure to bring joy to the students at St. Bernadette's Catholic School and in my opinion, shares the true spirit of Christmas.
https://m.signupgenius.com/ #!/showSignUp/30E0A4FAEA928A6FE3-45663521-thepyjama
