As President of Quilts Beyond Borders, I enjoy talking with curious supporters from around the world and recently received a thought-provoking question about our mission focusing on “under-served children, mainly orphans, across the world to provide a handmade quilt”. So, how DO we choose where to deliver these gifts made with love?
When we were founded, one of the world’s greatest challenges was the HIV/AIDs crisis, and the resulting orphan crisis that was spreading throughout Africa, among other places. Ethiopia had the greatest orphan population in the world with more than 5 million orphans at that time. A visit to the orphanages in that country at that time would have given you a view of skeletal children waiting for death, and those were the children that touched the hearts of our founders and spurred the creation of Quilts Beyond Borders (QBB), because they felt a need to help these children in some way, if only to bring some warmth, comfort and color into their lives for the short times they had left.
I became involved in the second year, because as a new quilter I was running out of relatives to quilt for, and because I had spent my childhood in Ethiopia, so I really wanted to help the people of the country that had been my home for so many years.
We rely on volunteers to travel and deliver our quilts in person and do not use international mail so that we can directly ensure these gifts actually get where they are intended to go. In 2008, economic conditions required that we expand our focus beyond Ethiopia and devise new ways to distribute the quilts to children who needed them.
The next “under-served” area that was selected for our quilts was Haiti, after the earthquake which occurred there in 2010, destroying an orphanage in the mountains there along with many other buildings and institutions in Haiti. After that we partnered with an organization that was providing quilts to victims of the tsunami in Japan. Over the next several years we partnered with many charities, churches and organizations to bring quilts to needy children and orphans in Africa, Europe, Asia, Central and South America. In January of 2013 we made our first deliveries in the US, providing quilts to needy children and elders living in the Navajo Nation.
Political situations throughout the world have caused some areas to fall into our “under-served” definition. For instance, since 2013 we’ve given almost 3000 quilts to children in Syrian Refugee camps in Jordan, Greece and Lebanon through a humanitarian group we work with.
2017 was unusual for us, because the US and world political climate impacted travel plans and preferences of our normal transportation network. With fewer travelers, we focused closer to home while continuing to give quilts to Syrian refugees, Guatemalan newborns, and to orphanages in Haiti. But half of our quilts were provided to needy children and some adults across the United States: Homeless students in Volusia County, Florida; Foster children in Appalachia; Homeless and needy families in Dayton, Ohio; Children and elders living in poverty in the Navajo Nation; Sex-trafficking victims as young as 5 years old; Homeless and bereaved children in Minnesota who have been affected by HIV/AIDs; and Women and children in domestic violence shelters in the Seattle area.
I’ve been asked if we have any requirements that a child be any specific religion or have a minimum grade-point average. I know that we’ve given quilts to children who are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and a lot of other religions. We have no religious constraints and work with both churches and secular charities to get quilts to children in need. And frankly, if a child can’t sleep warmly at night, how are they going to be able to stay awake in school, study and be able to maintain their grades? So GPA is not a requirement either.
Over the past decade we’ve given thousands of quilts to children in 27 countries, including the US. The actual meaning of “under-served” has been rather fluid, simply because conditions in many countries (including ours) change over time. The one thing that has not and will not change, is our passion for spreading comfort, love and hope to those who are suffering. Is the child needy? Do the nights get cold? That’s what counts.
-Carla
Quilts Beyond Borders 
Thank you Carla, 1/ for giving an update and information to those of us who may be new to contributing our time and talent as well as our financial resources to this worthy humanitarian cause regarding all needy children. 2/ and signing your name. It would be helpful to know the organizational structure, with names and volunteer locals, as well as appropriate emails to better communicate with those individuals in a more timely manner to keep the flow of quilts moving through the process to completion. Again, thank you for the efforts of all who volunteer….. Linda LeDoux, Greenwell Springs, Louisiana.
Thank you, Linda. To tell you briefly about our organizational structure, I’m Carla Triemer, the president of QBB. We have a Vice President, Secretary, two Co-treasurers, a Show Coordinator, a Blog Coordinator and 10 Regional Coordinators, spread across the country. Most of us who hold one of the offices also function as Regional Coordinators. We are all volunteers. We have no paid staff.
We currently funnel most of our email through our main QBB gmail ID, Quiltsbeyondborders@gmail.com That ID is checked daily by our Vice President, Tina Freudenberger, or someone she asks to stand in for her if she’s absent, usually me. Once you’re linked with a Regional Coordinator, you can certainly correspond directly with her, but generally we like for initial contact to go through the main ID, since many of us travel frequently and might not be home to receive a package if you were to send us quilts. Thus, we might want it to be directed to someone else. Also, with a pretty small staff, we stand in for each other if someone has family obligations or health issues or life-conflicts, so your Regional Coordinator (RC) might not be taking quilts for awhile and we might ask you to send them to another RC. Also, if we’re rushing to get a lot of quilts to a specific initiative quickly, we might ask you to send them to the place where the quilts will be transported to the children from, so that’s why we ask that the QBB gmail ID be your first point of contact.
We have a new blog coordinator, and among the things we’ve been discussing is updating some of our informational pages on the blog. We’ll plan to put more organizational structure info on those pages in the future.
Thank you very much for quilting for us!
Regards,
Carla
Carla, that was an excellent response to a good question. As one who has contributed to QBB and knows others who also contribute, we don’t care who gets the quilts, so long as they go where they’re needed.
I think you’re an excellent ambassador for QBB. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for the kind words, Susan! And thank you so much for contributing to QBB! I know the children appreciate every quilt!
Regards,
Carla
Liked what you had to say about religion and GPAs. A needy child is a needy child. I am proud of the contributions I have made over the past few years.
Kay McKinnon Sent from my iPadAir2
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Thank you, Kay! We appreciate your contributions! I know how cold I used to get as a child during the damp cold nights of the Ethiopian rainy seasons, and how much I appreciated the quilt my grandmother made for me. I know the children who are sleeping under yours cherish them!
Regards,
Carla
Carla, Thanks for the information on how it is decided who gets a quilt. I am very happy to hear that it’s only based on need. It is unfortunate that many times greed, want of power, or in the perverted name of religion, children, elderly and disabled get the end of a dirty stick. Is there somewhere I could pick up a couple of kits? When we come through BF on way to Libby it would be easy to swing onto mainstream and pick them up at the quilt shop there.
Sandria, typically we only give out kits at our fundraising booth at the IQF in Houston. However, send us an email at our gmail account, QuiltsBeyondBorders@gmail.com and let us know your address. If we have a Regional Coordinator who has any available quilt kits somewhere near you, it’s a possibility. No promises, though — we’re an all volunteer group, and we typically don’t cut kits until later in the year closer to the IQF. Thanks for your interest!
Regards,
Carla
I would like to donate completed quilts. How do I do that. Can’t find anything
At the top of this page there is a link “Quilt Dimensions and Criteria” and if you click on that there is a link that says “Where to send quilts and Tops”