Earrings for Africa! - Update III

(Recap: Earrings for Africa! is a fundraising project that my good friend Jenna is spearheading to help me as I prepare to take off on EWB's dime). And is nearly wrapping up, as I leave Edmonton today to spend some time with my family before I take off properly.

I'm really grateful to everyone for your support.

To the point then...
Fundraising Goal (not just the jewelry, but in total): $750.00
Day 44
Number of people in the facebook group: 72 (down from a peak of 75, and still pretty awesome)
Number of items created (including several non-earrings and thanks to the efforts of a number of my crafty friends): a lot. Probably close to 50, but I don't feel like updating the Excel formula to find out.
Number of items sold (thanks to the support of all kinds of wonderful people): 40
Funds raised so far: $543
Number of donations (many more thanks): 5 (not including people who told us to "keep the change")

I am, at this point, waiting to hear back from some of the letters I've sent. With any luck, that will be enough to put us over the $750.00 mark. If not, I'm still really grateful for your support. $500 is a lot.

We will still be selling the last few items we made, if people are interested.

Either way, sorry for the post drought in September (it's been a busy couple of weeks). I promise this blog will actually have interesting things to read on it from now on (as in, not fundraising updates ;-) ) starting with my next post (which will be up next time I have internet access).

Til then, thanks for reading!

MSF - Edmonton event this weekend

While taking a walk along Whyte Avenue this afternoon, I stumbled upon a really interesting educational event.
MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES/Doctors Without Borders is touring a Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City. They're in Edmonton (McIntyre Park, in Old Strathcona by the farmers' market) until Sunday (9:30-5pm) and providing tours (free of charge) to willing passerby. The tour is really good - in addition to talking about the work that MSF does, the guides try to get visitors to think about what it must be like to be uprooted and end up in a refugee camp. The guide for our group had actually done work in a clinic is the southern Sudan: the kind of insight she shared with us was amazing.

MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES (MSF), aka Doctors Without Borders, is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning non-governmental organization dedicated to providing emergency medical relief, particularly to refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs). They've been around since 1971, and blazed a great many trails in disaster relief and humanitarian assistance (some of them more controversial than others).

Walking through the camp really got me thinking about the work I'm about to be embarking on. In many ways, I'm fortunate this time around - EWB Canada targets their efforts to capacity building in more stable communities, so it's unlikely that I'll be dealing with the realities that MSF volunteers confront overseas, especially in camps like these where violence and rampant illness & malnutrition are common. It really gave me an interesting perspective on the kind of challenges I'll be confronting.

Check it out if you have the time.

The Plan (wait for it, here comes a pun...)

Looks like I'll be joining the EWB Water and Sanitation Team as a volunteer with a new partner agency: Plan Malawi.

Plan Malawi is part of Plan International, an international NGO primarily concerned with improving the lives of children in developing countries.

As a new partnership, some of my time with Plan Malawi will be spent assessing the existing and potential opportunities for collaboration between EWB and the organization. For the rest, I'll be working with Plan and with rural communities in Malawi to try and improve access to sanitary water and facilities, reducing the risk of various illnesses.
Though I'm not 100% sure of the details of the projects that PlanMalawi is working on (the internet is a bit scarce - apparently Google doesn't know everything...), it looks like we'll be working with an approach known as Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS).

I'm really looking forward to working with an agency that puts such an emphasis on children. I just hope I can get up to speed fast enough to be more of a help than a hindrance to them in their work.

Earrings for Africa! - Update II

(Recap: Earrings for Africa! is a fundraising project that my good friend Jenna is spearheading to help me as I prepare to take off on EWB's dime)

The thanks continue! Your support has been fantastic so far.

To the point then...
Fundraising Goal (not just the jewelry, but in total): $750.00
Day 30
Number of people in the facebook group: 70 (!!!)
Number of items created (including several non-earrings and thanks to the efforts of a number of my crafty friends): 38
Number of items sold (thanks to the support of all kinds of wonderful people): 21
Funds raised so far: $156
Number of donations (many more thanks): 2 (not including people who told us to "keep the change")

The making things has slowed down a bit (yay school...) but we'll be putting up more photos today. We also hope to take some of the old ones down/replace them over the weekend.

In the realm of other fundraising efforts, I'll be writing some letters over the next week or so (once I finalize who I'm writing them to...). Hopefully that'll be enough to surpass my goal.

If you know of anyone who is not on facebook that might be interested in supporting our fundraising efforts (or just likes shiny jewelry), please feel free to get them to email me. I'd be happy to send them photos via the bits of the internet that aren't facebook.

And last but not least, if jewelry isn't your thing, we do accept straight-up cash! ;-)

Many thanks again!