Our very brave Emma is still recovering from her double lung transplant but reports ‘Things are slow and it looks like probably being a year of recovery due to all the complications I’ve had and still getting though. Still I’m plodding along and will get there!’  Seems to be  a long slow journey but I know we are all constantly sending love and hugs to let her know we are thinking of her.  Well done Emma, you have come so far.  Love also to Brad and Teddy.

The map has just been updated and we are inching ever nearing the magical 10,000 duck mark.  One of my favourite comments from this week came from Julie Gregson of Manchester who was holidaying with her family in Perth, Scotland when she found one of the Ben’s PeeBat ducks in a geocache.

Julie commented “Found this lovely duck while on holiday in Scotland. It will be coming home to Manchester with us. When I read the background to this project it struck a chord with me. My friend’s son had a bone marrow
transplant after an auto immune disease attacking his liver. Over a
year on he is healthy and doing well thanks to the kindness of a
stranger.

The kindness of strangers, whether you are making ducks or gifting your organs, bone marrow, blood or tissues, is what the Little Yellow Duck Project is all about.

Some of us are always looking for new and clever names for our ducks.  Well some of our members, I seem to stick to the same names – must do something about that.

Lucky Duck maker Aunty Jacqui, has released several at the Weald and Downland Museum in Chichester this week named after her favourite treats.  Some logged on the World Map are called Popcorn, Jelly Baby, Dolly Mixture and Sherbert.

This young man was delighted to find Jacqui’s creation, Jelly Baby.

In July, 2018 189 ducks were logged onto our World Map.  If we are still running at an average of one in four ducks are logged, that makes 726 smiles and an unknown number of lives saved.

My maths isn’t anything to write home about but I figure that the nearly 10,000 ducks now on the map multiplied by 4 (for the ones that aren’t logged), gives us 20,000 feet if they were laid end to end.  Doesn’t sound much if you say it like that but they would go up one side of the Eiffel Tower and back down the other side.  We could also cross the Thames, and back, 5 times via Tower Bridge in London.

I love being part of this wonderful LYDP family.

For those Lucky-Duckers who are concerned or disappointed that their protégé ducks have gone to the ‘lost duck planet’ (next to the planet where the lost socks live), some of the ducks my cousin Jen and I left in Abergavenny in Duck Week in April have found their way home to the map in the last couple of weeks.  The only date we have to update the map is one on top of the logging email so there is no way of knowing what they have been doing in the meantime.

A duck party somewhere perhaps?

Sally duck Abergavenny

A few weeks ago, Layla Duck was found in Lealholm in North Yorkshire by members of the Crown Biker MCC.  The group, which has 31 members  was formed 3 1/2 years ago in Redcar, Cleveland with the intention of riding from their base to pubs with Crown in their names whilst raising money for Maxis Mates, a charity that rehomes dogs.  Layla looks like she is having fun, on a double mission to help people and their best friends. 

Well, not the actual planet but our own map of it is very yellow.  Now covering 95 countries, that’s half of the countries in the world.  I thought we had a new country this week when a duck in South Korea was logged, but it is actually the second duck to be logged there.

I find shopping malls are a good place, especially cafes with outside tables where a duck can be sneakily left as I quickly make my escape.  It doesn’t always work and I have been chased down the street by wait staff on occasion.

This week amongst the ducks logged was Granville.  Found and adopted by Eve, Granville was found hiding inside a vending machine in Billingham Forum near Stockton-On-Tees.  That’s inventive.

It’s finally here! Yellow Duck Day 2017!

Yellow Duck Day is marked annually on April 15th, the date that the Little Yellow Duck Project was launched back in 2014. This date was chosen as it marked a year to the day that I lost my best friend (and my son’s godmother), Clare Cruickshank.

As many of you will already know, Clare was in desperate need of a double lung transplant due to end-stage cystic fibrosis. At just 26 years of age, Clare ran out of time due to the chronic shortage of donor organs in the UK.  Clare had decided beforehand, that she would want to be a donor if she didn’t make it.  As a result her corneas were donated to restore sight to two young adults in their twenties.

Clare was crazy about little yellow ducks and collected them in all shapes and sizes. It was an example of the sweet, amusing and fun-loving person that she was.  No one could feel sad or downhearted when Clare was around! So they seemed perfect to be used as an emblem for spreading happiness around the world, as well as awareness of how we can all save lives through the gifts of blood, bone marrow/stem cell, organ and tissue donation.

Clare had an incredibly pragmatic attitude to organ donation. She once summed the situation up so simply to me when we were discussing people choosing to be organ donors…

“If you’ve got a pair of shoes that you don’t need anymore, you take them to a charity shop don’t you? Then someone else can use them. What’s the difference with passing on your organs?”

If we all thought more like this, people like Clare would still be with us today.  Thanks to this attitude, Clare’s corneas went on to give sight to two other people when she no longer needed them. What an amazing legacy for such a beautiful person to leave behind.  And now, through the Little Yellow Duck Project, more people will hopefully do the same.

Today has been a huge success in spreading awareness of the project and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped make it happen. I’ll be updating on everything achieved in my next post. But don’t forget, the Little Yellow Duck Project runs 365 days a year, so please keep making those ducks and passing on their life-saving messages!

It’s all about ducks with ears this Easter at the Little Yellow Duck Project…aren’t they cute?!

If you’re releasing ducks this Easter, please share your photos with us on our Facebook Page…we love seeing what all our volunteers are up to!

We are now less than a week away from Yellow Duck Day 2017 – the day we mark the anniversary of the project’s launch. I vividly remember that day back in April 2014 when I anxiously checked my emails, desperately hoping that a duck would be reported as found somewhere in the world. When that first email came in (from Stockton-on-Tees, UK) it was a moment of huge celebration.

Then came the next challenge….to get a duck reported from outside the UK! Within 24 hours that challenge had been met with a duck reported from the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands and the next target was set…to get a duck reported from outside Europe!

We had to wait 9 days for that moment to occur (with a report from Indiana, USA) and from then on the numbers of countries and continents began to grow. Incredibly, with the first year of the project’s launch we had received duck reports from every single continent in the world (including Antarctica!) and from 61 different countries.

Obviously after that, the numbers of new countries being added to the map began to slow down somewhat, but that only serves to make the occasions when it does occur all the sweeter.

So this morning, you can imagine my elation when I switched on the computer and saw that Jordan – country 94 – was to join the map! This was all thanks to one of our most diligent knitting volunteers, Terry Walters, who has now knitted over 700 ducks for us….yes, that’s over 700!!

Terry’s sister, Lesley, was off on holiday to Jordan, so Terry ensured she went armed with a little band of ducks to leave for others to find, and in the hopes that at least one might get reported back to us. Sure enough, this morning it did! Bob the duck was found at the Monastery (Ad-Deir), one of the legendary monuments of Petra, an ancient city dating back to the 1st Century BC that was named as one of the 7 New Wonders of the World in 2007.

Here’s hoping that before too long, country 95 will join the map! Which one will it be?! If you can help us spread these little ducks around the world we would love you to get involved. Each one can spread some sunshine and happiness and – with any luck – perhaps even go on to save a life by encouraging someone to consider becoming a blood, bone marrow or organ donor. Let’s keep the yellow ducks flying!