With the clicking of knitting needles and careful stitches, members of the Canberra knitting and crocheting community create items made with love for people in need around the world. Some in groups and some alone, often giving to multiple initiatives, they are generous with their time and skills. One of these volunteers is Ruth Oldfield.

Ms Oldfield has been knitting since she was nine years old. During her teens, she made jumpers for herself, then when her children were born, she made clothes for her daughters. In 2015, she found herself unemployed, and, during a chat with her mother back in England, she learnt about the Red Cross Trauma Teddies.

The idea originated in Newcastle, NSW, after a paramedic noted the calming effect a teddy bear had on a screaming child when riding in an ambulance.

“Because children talk to their toys, if you have someone to tell about your trauma, it takes the worry from your subconscious to your conscious … if children tell the teddy bear everything that’s gone wrong, they sleep better,” says Ms Oldfield.

It didn’t take her long to approach the local Red Cross and start making the bears. Soon she had a group of volunteers helping her. Last year, the group and others from the community helped to create 1,824 Trauma Teddies and were awarded the national team of distinction by the Red Cross for their efforts.

Bears were delivered to every primary school across the ACT during the pandemic to help ease stress, some were sent overseas, and others to the NSW Northern Rivers during the floods. Volunteers during the floods told the team the bears had a huge positive impact on the children.

“Volunteers told me when kids come in, we say, ‘this little guy has lost his house as well, please look after him’ and instead of feeling like a victim, they feel capable and they’ve got someone else to look after,” she says.

According to Ms Oldfield, the feedback the group has received about their bears has been astounding; women and children had a friend to confide in, and children are distracted from broken bones. A package of 17 bears was sent to a museum of disasters in Finland that wanted to know the impact the bears make.

“They don’t interrupt you, they don’t tell you you’re wrong, they don’t correct you and say ‘no, actually, I think you’ve got that wrong’, and they speak any language. They do an enormous amount of help,” she says.

Each month, the group delivers 50 bears to Canberra Hospital, 30 to Calvary Hospital, and 20 to Queanbeyan Hospital. Sometimes they even deliver to Cooma and Goulburn when they can organise the bears and delivery.

Around 15 volunteers come to Ms Oldfield’s house each month for a day of ‘finishing school’, where they sew the official Red Cross label onto up to 200 bears for people in crisis, while enjoying coffee, cake and a catch-up.

With many of the teddies going to young children, there are strict criteria each bear must meet: no holes or gaps stuffing could be pulled out of, the yarn can’t have glitter or beads, they need to be tightly packed and stand upright when held by the feet. Those that don’t meet these standards are still delivered to someone in need.

“It’s still made with love, still needs a home. So, he goes to an orphanage in the Philippines where they don’t have any toys, it will be loved and do its job,” she says.

It was by word of mouth that Ms Oldfield found out about Wrap With Love, an initiative that delivers handmade blankets to areas of disaster around the world. People knit or crochet 28 ten-inch squares – the size of a single blanket.

Once completed, preferably as a finished blanket, though they do accept just the squares too, the gifts are shipped to Alexandria. Cutting out any shipping fees, Spotlight and Tobin Brothers Funerals will deliver the blankets to the depot. Every blanket is finished with a kangaroo motif label and the words ‘with love from Australia’, so no matter where it ends up, the recipient will know that Australians care about them.

“They go all over the place – refugees, overseas, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Tonga when there was the volcano eruption, the outback communities, anyone that needs a blanket. It’s massive,” she says.

Yet another project Ms Oldfield is involved with is the Fish and Chips campaign, which aims to see newborn babes across the world dressed in appropriate clothing.

“Newborn babies in third world countries whose mothers don’t have any clothes for them to wear because otherwise they’d be wrapped up in newspaper like fish and chips,” she explains.

The baby clothes are delivered to countries where water for washing clothes isn’t easy to come by; at best they will be washed in a river, and many will never be washed. So, they ensure each pack is bright or deeply coloured.

Motivated to keep girls in schools across the world, Ms Oldfield is also involved in a charity that sews menstruation packs for young women in Africa. Born from that group was the initiative to deliver premature baby clothes to new mothers in Sri Lanka. One of the group’s volunteers is originally from Sri Lanka and delivers goods to hospitals there; a doctor told her about the clothing pattern.

“They don’t get the humidity cribs and the intensive care that we get here,” Ms Oldfield says. “This tiny little thing can’t regulate its own temperature.”

Volunteering craft and time is like a rabbit hole, she says; suddenly you are involved in countless projects. Unsure whether it’s her Christian upbringing, white guilt or middle-class comfort that motivates her, she is simply happy to be helping. Other members of the community have witnessed first-hand the impact these goods can make when they lived in countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

“We are a bit of an ivory tower here in the ACT, we’re a well-paid, well-educated enclave. There’s also an international community that’s aware of what’s going on in other places,” she says.

While there are some set groups for projects, there are volunteers who donate their creations, materials and time once off or occasionally. Ms Oldfield is active on various Facebook groups where she posts call-outs for more volunteers, spreads the word about what they are doing, and helps arrange fundraisers.

Last year, the group raised over $13,000 for Red Cross through a donated yarn de-stash sale, and hosts market days to cover the costs of posting handmade items overseas to countries in need.

“It’s a big-hearted community and it’s so gratifying to see the difference you can make for other people,” she says. “The other aspect of knitting is that it’s a social exercise.”

Several of the volunteers Ms Oldfield works with she has never met; they correspond through email. She says the soothing practice can be done in a social setting or alone, and some use it as a deterrent against a vice like smoking or drinking.

If knitting in a group is something you would be interested in, she suggests joining local Facebook groups or heading to your local library and placing a note. If you want to learn, there are also options.

“You need a grandma to teach you, someone who loves you and there’s lots of time and lots of individual attention. Best of all, the best way ever to learn is off a YouTube video.”

Knit for a cause with Red Cross [redcross.org.au/teddy], Wrap with Love [wrapwithlove.org], or Fish and Chips [facebook.com/groups/1767222583489219/].

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