OUR STORY
Scrubs for Cambridgeshire was created with the intention to work together as community to support the NHS. It was noticed that most hospitals and care home needed lot of help during the start of the pandemic.
In April 2020, I lost my little business caused of Covid-19, people that run afterschool clubs & workshops or tailors were not allowed to work because of the risk of spread COVID-19. At that moment my husband and son were in the middle east and stayed there in the next 6 months because of travel restrictions, my daughter and me remained in the UK. My daughter was one the kids that were not be able to do GCSE exams and was forced to finish school earlier, so no Proms, no special assembly or proper good bye for these (year 11) 2020 generation. Definelty young people suffers a lot during lock down in the UK as everybody else.
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I love to keep me busy and I was looking for things to do during the first lock down, I was searching on the internet and discovered that there was lack of scrubs for the health care workers in the UK and people started sewing scrubs for the NHS. Immediately I wanted to help, there were not sewing group in Cambridge at that moment so I asked my friends that were working for the NHS if local hospitals were in need of scrubs uniform or any other item which involves sewing.
Initially, I offered to help with 10 scrubs, however, the demand was much higher than couldn't handle it, consequently I asked my adult students from my sewing clubs for help and they were incredibly happy to join me. Unfortunately, they were not enough to cover the initial requirement of 150 scrubs. Therefore, I decided to ask for additional help using social media and opened a Facebook group, with the idea of expanding the network and increase the production of scrubs in an efficient manner; using our sewing skills.
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The respond was overwhelming; now there are nearly 1000 group member and there were almost 300 fantastic volunteers at the peak sewing with their soul for this cause. At the beginning our hub/storage was my house and garden in Girton, everybody was in lock down so we had to delivery/collect material or finished products.
I couldn't start SFC without the amazing help of a mum of three from one of my sewing club Emori Cordero who helped me to coordinate all sewers with the delivery/collection, she was doing the administration for her home, her girls were fantastic helping us delivering/collection for her home to mine (few houses away). At the very beginning I also had the fantastic support from another mum from one of my sewing club Monica Trave, she is also a former nurse that kindly offered her help as driver and she was amazing doing it, always with a big smile on her face; at one point she did 30 deliveries/collection in a day all around Cambridgeshire.
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We had support from everywhere, there were amazing people offering their help with the delivery/collection sometimes they were doing long distances bike ride. There was also a fantastic lady Moira Neal that was teaching how to drive her granddaughter Hope while they were doing tones of collection/delivery to hospitals and houses. We were overwhelming with help from the community in general, we had also support from small and medium size business, Halls & Commercial properties, some of the small business like the lovely café The Geographer (now online shop) offered their business as collection point for scrubs patterns and donations.
At the moment we got a temporary hub at Childerley Estates, where a group of wonderful volunteers get together twice a week to sew, prepared donations and much more while having fun.
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Our goal was Help as many NHS Hospital, Health Centres and care home in Cambridgeshire as possible and still is but we also are helping our community is different ways, we are now helping other beautiful causes with our sewing skills and we always have projects on the go. We got volunteers that need to keep sewing or coming to our hub to have a cup of coffee while doing some sewing as it will help to improved their mental health.
Since we started we donated more than 28,000 fabric items all around Cambridgeshire and beyond.
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Our Volunteers are from different part of Cambridgeshire including Girton, Oakington, Cottenham, Histon, Landbeach, waterbeach, Cambridge, Cambourne, Godmanchester, St Neots. Ely, Newmarket, Bedford, Herford, Suffolk, Huntingdon, Oakham, Fenlands and many others.
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If you would to be part of our team sewing form home or from our hub in Childerley please let us know at gioscrubsforcambridge@gmail.com
Thank you for your continue support!
Gioconda Gomez (Gio)
Founder
Scrubs For Cambridgeshire