A charity that has helped millions of poverty-stricken girls and women in Africa is facing a crisis of its own.
Livingston-based Smalls for All is in desperate need of new premises or it may not be able to continue.
The charity sends underwear to women and children in African orphanages, slums, camps, schools and hospitals.
But its founder Maria MacNamara and her team of volunteers, need to vacate their unit at Kirkton Campus next week and have nowhere to go.
The charity currently has around 15,000 parcels packed with bras and knickers to sort through before they can be sent to Africa and Maria said she has no idea where she will store them if a new base cannot be found.
And she paid tribute to her dedicated band of 25 volunteers who have stuck by the charity, working in the dark without heating.
Maria said ideally they are looking for a unit between 4000 and 6000 square feet.
If that cannot be arranged Maria said some kind of storage facility would do to keep the parcels while a new base is found.
She said: “We’re not looking for anything free of charge. We’ll pay our way but we need to get something in place as soon as possible.
“We’ve transport organised to move everything but nowhere to go as yet.”
She continued: “The ironic thing is we have just changed our constitution to be able to help women and girls in the UK and just days later we got a letter giving us notice to leave.”
Maria founded Smalls for All in 2010 from her garage at home and it has grown to become a massive operation that collects and distributes millions of items of underwear every year.
Anyone who wants to help can email maria@smallsforall.org.
For more information visit www.smallsforall.org.
