I’ve done a final tally of the Help for Haiti pattern sales and am sending in today another contribution of $186 to the long-term recovery efforts headed by the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. Thank you to those who helped out with purchasing HeartStrings patterns designated for donations. This brings the total donated to just a bit over $1000 including personal donations made before the Help for Haiti campaign on Ravelry began.
I think it is important to keep in mind the support for long-term recovery efforts. After the most immediate, critical needs are handled, I know from my experience with hurricane Katrina in my area that there is still so much to do and it takes long, long time to get on the road to recovery after a major calamity.
Although I did set up the 3 downloadable patterns I designated for donations in the Ravelry Store, I also tracked and credited donations for those same patterns sold through Patternfish and Shopatron (the majority of orders having come through Ravelry and Shopatron). I hope I didn’t miss personally thanking everyone who purchased through Ravelry and Shopatron. Sorry – I don’t have access to buyers’ names on Patternfish, so if you purchased there, just know that it was appreciated and I thanked you anonymously.
Another thing that was interesting to me was the relative response to each of the 3 designated patterns. I initially designated only the Thinking of You Scarf as that clearly expressed my own sentiment in this situation. But I wanted to give people a bit more choice, so also designated 2 other patterns that I thought would follow on in a similar friendship and compassion theme – – Circle of Friendship Socks and My Beading Heart Scarf. The Thinking of You Scarf pattern was clearly the most popular of the 3 during this period (even following Valentine’s Day which at first I thought might have been the reason).
To all the designers who participated in the Help for Haiti campaign at Ravelry, and especially to Casey at Ravelry for doing the programming to rally the Haiti donations, thanks again for thinking of Haiti and donating what you could toward the relief effort; however small or large, and whatever your preferred organization was to donate through, it all adds up to positive results.