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http://www.flickr.com/photos/mainecreations/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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I’ve said this before: it’s truly magical how the internet allows us to reach out and offer support to others, regardless of geography.
Deb Roby alerted me to The Small Purse Project, which is small and meaningful, and I hope you can help.
The best thing to do is read Deb’s excellent post about it, but here’s the gist: Kelly Wickham is an assistant principal at a high school in Illinois. This school has had a lot of negative events recently.
Quoting from Kelly’s blog post:
“Recently, because of a response to the media trashing us, we are hitting hard on some things in our school. Students have never been allowed to carry backpacks, but the issue that keeps coming up are the girls’ purses. Hey, I’m as fashion forward as the next gal so I know that big purses are here to stay. When my male students complain that girls get to even carry purses I remind them, gently, that as soon as they have to carry around tampons and Midol this won’t be an issue.
Some of the biggest complainers have come to see me in my office or caught me in the hallway or a classroom:
“Why can’t we carry big purses? I saved up $50 to buy this and it’s the only one I have! I can’t buy another one.”
“This is stupid! I’m a good girl. Why are we always getting punished?”
“Who even SELLS small purses? Everything in the stores is big.”
These girls are right. They’re also pretty whiny when they come talk to me so I decided to take something ugly and turn it in to something pretty. I asked seven girls to help me coordinate a Purse Drive for school and I’m using my blog to spread the word.”
So, Kelly is putting out a call for small purses – they can be handmade or thrifted. She’ll set up a small purse shop at school, where girls can buy a bag for $5.00. The money will then benefit the school.
Deb has rounded up some crafty small-purse ideas on her post, and I also like this one from Everyday Sugar. Also, here’s a roundup of small crochet bag patterns from Love to Know Crafts.
You can find some purse specs, and the address to send your purses, right over here.
Diane,
Thank you. In tears….
So sweet! I've never made a purse, but I'm excited to make one now! What a great project. Thanks for posting this, Diane!
I'll think of her when I see a small purse at a thrift store. :-) And I love the idea of crocheting a small purse!
That's a great idea! I'm a bit far out of town (Canada) but what about possibly getting the girls involved and learning to make some of the purses themselves? There's tons of free patterns for knitted & crocheted bags on Ravelry and other blogs, perhaps this is an opportunity to get them involved and learning to craft, then they can be creative and design the bags that they want.
This is a great idea, Kelle – you might want to pop over to Kelli's
post and suggest it to her.
This is great – thanks so much for sharing. I have at least one purse (and a few more, if I can find them – handmade by me but packed away somewhere!) to send!
Shall do!!
Shall do!!