NGA meaning in Business ?
Answer: What is Needlework Guild of America mean?
National Giving Alliance, (until July 31, 2019 The Needlework Guild of America (NGA)) was a women's organization founded in 1885. It operates through grass-roots volunteer groups called branches Individuals of all ages, social clubs, service organizations, religious groups, social agency staffs, faculties, corporate employees, and other promote NGA’s purpose of collecting new clothing and household linens, and essential toiletries, and of distributing them locally to those in need through welfare agencies, as well as to private cases, as determined by the branch.
A mine disaster in Wales in 1882 brought about the beginning of the Needlework Guild. Lady Giana Wolverton of Dorsetshire, England, had founded a home for orphans. After the mine disaster, Lady Wolverton’s orphanage received all orphans who were sent to her. She found ways to provide for these children in every way except clothing, so she called together a group of her friends and asked them to provide “two new articles of clothing. They must be new. They must be exactly alike.”
“But why two garments?” she was asked.
“What does the child wear,” replied Lady Wolverton, “while one garment is being laundered?” Thus the Guild’s slogan was born: “One to wear, and one to wash.”
Mrs. Alanson Hartpence of Philadelphia learned of the work of the Guild on a visit to England in 1885. Her niece, Laura Safford (later Mrs. John Wood Stewart), became the founder and first president of the Needlework Guild of America. A group of Laura Safford’s friends agreed to help her to sew for the needy and the Needlework Guild of America (NGA) was born.
The first Ingathering, as it is still called, in October 1885. Communications were poor and travel difficult so the attendance was small. Nevertheless, 921 garments were collected. Contributors to the first Ingathering in Philadelphia included an eighty-year-old blind lady and a servant girl of twelve. Children were quickly found to be reliable. One of the founding members organized a group of children at a resort hotel to sew each afternoon for the Guild. The youth program has expanded through the years to include such groups as Girl Scouts and Camp Fire Boys and Girls.
Those first 921 garments were distributed to orphanages, hospitals and families in need. The Guild has from its beginning been “the charity that helps other charities.” During the first year, branches were organized in New Jersey. By 1886 the Guild was distributing garments not only locally but across the nation. The annual report that year states that clothing was sent to “sufferers by earthquake in Charleston.”
By 1888 there were eleven branches including Montclair, New Jersey, and New York City. The next year the annual report stated: “It is not a sewing society, as its name suggests, but an organization to receive garments and distribute them to the deserving poor.”
The first black branch was formed in Washington, D.C., in 1890. At the annual meeting in Chicago in 1896, the delegates decided to hold annual meetings every other year in the Philadelphia area and elsewhere in the country on alternate years. This practice still continues. Also in that year the Guild became incorporated as the Needlework Guild of America, Incorporated. In 1897 it adopted the
idea of Money Members as well as Garment Members.
During the l890s the Guild spread north, south, and west so that in 1898 it was necessary to open a national office, then at 1227 Arch Street, Philadelphia. That year, the beginning of the Spanish-American War, a special collection of 48,141 garments was made for the relief of Cuban and American soldiers fighting in Cuba, in addition to the two garments per member. By 1900 there were 311 branches in twenty states, and 330,624 garments were collected; by 1905 the garment count reached the 400,000 mark.
NGA was quick in corning to the aid of the victims of the great earthquake in San Francisco in 1906. As a result it began an affiliation with the Red Cross in 1907 to distribute articles during catastrophes free of charge. In response to unspeakable conditions in Labrador, Labrador Branch was formed in 1907. Its work grew greatly that eventually the Labrador New England Branch was formed, and the Labrador Coast to Coast Branch, with headquarters in New York City, covered the rest of the country. The work of these branches continued well into the 1950s.
An affiliation with the General Federation of Women’s Clubs [see Philadelphia Federation of Women’s Clubs and Allied Organizations began in 1909. At its annual meeting in 1910, the silver anniversary of the Guild, thirty-four states had branches represented at the celebration, and Mrs. Stewart spoke of the early days.
When World War I began, the Guild was already working through a hospital in Paris. In 1915 a special collection made possible the establishment of workrooms in Lyons, France, which reference
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