During the fall of 2023, I started knitting as a way of stress relief. Gradually, I found peace in knitting, where I could forget about my problems, focusing on the needle and wool. As my passion for knitting grew, I found two other students at my school who were interested in knitting and had a desire to use this small hand skill to turn it into something impactful. We started a small initiative called Knit to Connect that has helped implement knitting into a solution for a social cause.
As a fundraiser, Knit to Connect has collected money from donations, charity sports tournaments like football, basketball and volleyball, business initiatives like bake sales, raffles, etc. The gathered donations have been used to buy quality wool and essential items like needles, storage spaces, etc. We searched for unemployed women who were desperately searching for employment in different parts of Kathmandu. We reached out to a couple of NGOs in a few months. Slowly we had gathered a group of females who wanted to knit in order to be employed. Some had to be taught how to knit as well. In this way, a vocational skill was taught while strengthening both the gender equality and the economic statuses.
Slowly, we also began enjoying seeing the impact we had made on a small part of our community and realized that even small initiatives like ours can put a smile on multiple faces.
For instance, we met a woman called Mira Thapa Magar who lives in the Kathmandu Valley. She started knitting at her young age of about eight years old when a Tibetan lady from Kashmir taught her this skill. She is a single mother with a kid and has been through difficult times. During such periods, she worked in all kinds of jobs ranging from painting walls to porter works. She now knits during her free time for her kids and grandkids. We provided her with bundles of wool and a knitting needle set and asked her to knit for us in exchange for financial benefits. As of now, we’ve met multiple women other than Ms. Mira and helped them use their vocational skills for a social cause and also benefit at the same time. Slowly, we also began enjoying seeing the impact we had made on a small part of our community and realized that even small initiatives like ours can put a smile on multiple faces.
We gradually gathered students who wanted to contribute to the cause. After much struggle, we taught them how to knit and gathered a ton of items that could later be donated, fulfilling our motive of spreading the use of this vocational skill in order to help the less fortunate. We have plans to donate all the knitted items to those in need, especially in rural areas in late January. We are desperately searching for more people who can knit and contribute to the cause.
(Apurva Rai is a student pursuing A-Level course at Rato Bangla School. Rai can be reached at [email protected].)
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