Knitted with Love for Ethiopian Newborns
Join us in knitting woollen baby hats for newborns. Your handmade creations will offer warmth and comfort to babies born in rural areas where cold nights are common and resources are scarce.
A warm hat can be lifesaving for a vulnerable newborn. And in communities where women traditionally birth at home without medical care, gifting a baby hat encourages mothers to seek a safe delivery with a skilled Hamlin midwife - potentially saving both their lives.
For many of these babies, this will be their only piece of clothing — an essential item that provides warmth and symbolises the love and care from people like you, thousands of miles away.
How to Get Involved:
Materials: Please use pure wool if possible, preferably in bright and varied colours. Ethiopians love vibrant hues, so this is a great opportunity to use up leftover yarn.
Why Wool: Wool is ideal due to its natural insulating properties, which help regulate temperature and keep babies warm during the cold nights that are common in the high altitude areas of rural Ethiopia. It’s also breathable, allowing moisture to evaporate while retaining warmth. As well as durable, ensuring that the hats will last and can be passed down to subsequent babies.
Pattern: Any simple baby hat pattern will be gratefully received, although we recommend the one outlined here, and available on our downloadable flier as it features a ribbed and stretchy band that can be rolled up to double the warmth for a newborn and rolled down as the baby grows. If you prefer to crochet, you can also find a similar pattern on this page of our website.
The approximate measurements suitable for a newborn are 12cm wide, by 17cm high (including a 5cm band).
Knitting / Crochet Patterns
Sending Your Hats:
Please package your hats including your name and email address so we can thank you for your generous contribution and keep you updated on our work via our newsletter.
Hats can be posted or delivered to our Christchurch office, or dropped to a local collection point if there's one near you.
Our Christchurch Office:
Hamlin Fistula NZ
C/- Oxford Terrace Baptist Church Office
288 Oxford Terrace,
Christchurch 8011
Help us get every hat to a baby who needs it:
To make sure every hat reaches a baby safely, we also need to cover the cost of getting them there.
It costs around 50 cents to package and ship each hat to Ethiopia. With a goal of 40,000 hats per year, this adds up quickly — and we can’t do it without your help.
If you're able, we kindly ask that for every hat you send, you also include a 50-cent donation to cover freight. For example: 10 hats = $5, 20 hats = $10
Your knitting warms their heads—your donation gets it into their hands. Thank you!
How many hats are needed?
Hats for Hamlin will an ongoing project with no cut-off time for donations. Around 40,000 babies are born each year with the help of a Hamlin midwife across our 92 supported midwifery clinics. As we continue to train and place more midwives across rural Ethiopia, this number is set to increase — so a steady supply of hats will be gratefully received.
Not a knitter but would like to support this initiative?
We would gratefully accept donations of wool that can be passed onto knitting groups to be crafted into hats, or monetary donations to help towards the costs of bagging and freight.
Every hat you knit makes a significant difference. This small act of kindness can save two lives, mum and baby, and bring warmth, love and hope to a family in Ethiopia. Thank you for helping these precious little ones start their lives wrapped in warmth and care.
