Outreach
Bring the Sweet Pea Project to Your Town
Please feel free to pass this along to the bereavement coordinator at your local hospital.
Book Sponsorship Program
Sweet Pea Project's Book Sponsorship Program allows families to honor their little ones while reaching out to newly bereaved parents. If you would like to sponsor copies of Still. to be handed out to newly bereaved parents at your local hospital, you may purchase them for $5.00 a copy- a 50% discount- directly through the publisher. Before delivering them to the hospital, consider adding a bookplate to the inside cover explaining that this book was lovingly donated in honor of the short but precious life of your child and theirs. For more information please visit The Book Project page or contact Stephanie@sweetpeaproject.org.
Blanket Donation Program
To request blanket tags and informational papers for your hospital, CLICK HERE. Please do not do this until after you have finished collecting blankets, as we will need to know the number of blankets you have. Please take note of our Blanket Standard, which can be found at the bottom of this page, before you embark on a blanket drive.
Looking for info on how to begin your own local blanket drive? All the details are up at www.sweetpeaproject.org/localdrive. Thank you!
Our newly reimagined, sustainable donation plan...
In an effort to create a more sustainable way of providing comfort to bereaved parents nationwide, Sweet Pea Project has recently made some changes to our Blanket Donation program. For the past 6 years, we have collected donations of blankets from individuals all over the country, and then shipped them back out to hospitals in all 50 states. Well over 7,000 blankets have been carefully, lovingly, processed in this way- and we're honored to know that they ended up snuggly wrapped around deeply loved babies during the only hours they were held by their devoted parents. With this incredibly important end in mind, we have reimagined our system in a way that we hope will not only make the program more sustainable, allowing us to continue to expand our reach, but will also help to involve communities around the world in our efforts. Engaging communities has always been one of the fundamental goals of Sweet Pea Project, because it is within unified communities that social change occurs.
Sweet Pea Project is no longer accepting blanket donations, and is instead encouraging those who wish to donate blankets to keep them local. Instead of sending blankets to us to ship out to hospitals, the donor will deliver the blankets to their local hospitals, and we will provide them with blanket tags and informational papers to accompany their blankets. Keeping the blankets local not only cuts down on shipping costs for the donor, it also allows the impact of their donation to be felt closer to home. Newly bereaved parents will receive blankets donated by their neighbors. We hope this will help foster a sense of community for the bereaved, and offer connections during those awfully isolating first weeks of grief.
For hospital staff who have requested blankets in the past, or who wish to begin offering our blankets at their facilities, we will work with you to create blanket drives within your community by providing fliers and informational materials. We will also work to facilitate connections between our contacts in the same region as your hospital. If a hospital is in desperate need, and blanket drive efforts fail, we will provide any blankets we have available at that time while the hospital staff works to find a more permanent solution.
Interested in holding a blanket drive? Please first take note of our Blanket Standard, so that you are only collecting the types of blankets we accept.
Blanket Standard
Sweet Pea Project accepts new, unused blankets in receiving blanket sizes, preemie sizes, and micro-preemie sizes. Gently used blankets are not appropriate, as we want each special blanket to belong to one child and nobody else. Sweet Pea Project accepts handmade blankets, but we need to be very careful with them due to the extremely fragile nature of a stillborn child's skin. Even though the fibers of crocheted and knitted blankets may feel soft to us, they can disturb the baby's delicate skin causing tears and abrasions. For that reason, we usually ask that all handmade blankets be made out of flannel, fleece, cotton or another similar fabric. If you are only able to donate crocheted/knitted blankets, please make sure that you use the special soft baby yarn when making them. We don't want to come off as picky or ungrateful, but the last thing we want is for our blankets to harm a baby's skin and cause parents even more pain than they are already experiencing. Thank you for understanding.
Sweet Pea Project runs completely on donations. Our project only works because we have our hearts wide open and our feet firmly planted within a beautiful community. The generosity, compassion, and support that we have been met with over the past 6 years has humbled us, and filled us with confidence in moving forward. With you by our side, we know we can make a difference in this world. Thank you for that.
If you are interested in supporting the Sweet Pea Project's vision,
please visit the Donation page to see how you can help.