Still in "Giving" Mode

That 10-Day Give may have finished up 6 days ago, but I haven't completely slacked off the way I thought I would. So far this week...

• On Thursday, I mailed $1080 worth of coupons to the US Air Force base in Okinawa. And today I collected dozens of coupon flyers and chopped them up. This week's selection was obnoxiously crappy, so the yield for the Overseas Coupon Program was pitiful.
• I made another Kiva loan, this time to a seamstress in Cambodia. What can I say, I envy her skills!
• Today I mailed the $245 I raised with charity massages to Thai Freedom House, which is currently struggling with a bad landlord situation, inflation, blossoming enrollment, and reduced contributions due to the economy.
• This afternoon I will be doing another charity massage, and the money from this one will go towards a joint project by Feed Villages and Village Volunteers, earmarked for the construction of grain/produce storage facilities to keep the food supply from the Community Garden Project available for their feeding programs year-round. They need $3100 to pull it off.

More Hush Money

Just before I left for vacation in late August, I had more work-related awkwardness. Actually, that's a really mild way of describing the situation... let's just say I must have been wearing my Cloak of Irresistibility that day. So last night, I got in touch with the girl behind Feed Villages to see if she was still actively fundraising for her super-smart communal gardening project in Kenya. She is, so that's where this little "apology tip" is going.

Updated Bits 'n' Pieces

Goods4Girls
I finally have everything I need - sewing machine, donated materials, specialty fabric, fasteners, and the one thing that's kept me from getting started: a basic how-to book, which just arrived this afternoon. It's time to figure out how to fire up the machine and what knobs and levers do what. My goal is to be proficient enough to produce a couple of donate-able pads before I leave for Mexico on the 21st, so that I can get feedback from the woman running the program as to whether they're good enough by the time I get back. Then I'll become an unstoppable sewing maniac! Oh, and a shout-out to the nice Freecyclers of Manhattan who let me take their old towels and unwanted flannel off their hands for this project.

Feed Villages
Elana Greene's goal is to raise $100,000 to fund a community garden/farm, train people in sustainable eco-farming techniques so they can turn a profit and provide school lunches for hundreds of kids. She has passed the $3K mark and funded the purchase of 9 acres of farmland, and I forwarded $50 to her a week ago.

Burma
I wish my prediction on the 6th had been way off base and that the powermad f*ckwits running Burma had opened their borders to humanitarian aid. I need to stop reading the news items about this, it's just too upsetting. Give it another 10 days and there won't be much point trying to help...I guess time will tell if there will be any point in following through with my intention to contribute to follow-up efforts in a few months.

My Little Giving Game
I had a great week of business last week, netting $89 for my giving fund. Half will be stored for future donation to bigger projects assuming business continues to flourish, and the other half will go towards...hm, so many choices. Watch this space.

Leftover Luggage Space For Good
This is not an official program (hence no clickable link), just a new habit I'd like to form: bring suitable in-kind donations to local orphanages and organizations in developing countries. Next week I head to the Mayan Riviera for a vacation and will be donating school supplies and toys to Give-A-Toy-Get-A-Smile and maybe the literacy library in Akumal (if for no other reason than the adventure of taking a local bus to a minimally-touristed destination).

Putting the 'person' in 'personal'

Last month, I mentioned a tiny charity called Feed Villages ["Couch Cushion Change"] that I sent a few bucks to since I can't resist an original, practical grassroots approach. At my suggestion, the woman in charge started a blog to keep information on the project current and newsy. Now she's applying for grants to fund the project and sent me a copy of the proposal - as a reply to an old email, not as part of a mass email - with all the information I could possibly want about the goals and the steps needed to achieve them. I was really touched, since I'd only sent $10 and there's no way she could know that I just bought a $50 money order earmarked for Feed Villages.

I'm also getting geared up to sew cloth pads for Goods4Girls, so a few days ago I posted an ad on Freecycle to get my hands on unwanted towels and cotton flannel. So far I've hoofed it down to Chelsea to collect a large shopping bag of assorted goodies from a nice woman who works at a shelter; I've arranged to have another woman drop off some old flannel pj's with my doorman; and I'll be picking up some more supplies from someone who does cat rescue volunteer work next weekend. Tomorrow I will attempt to turn on and thread my new sewing machine, which I must admit is pathetically intimidating. I'm truly afraid of accidentally stitching my hand to the mat.

It hasn't been a busy week for my massage biz, so the best I can hope for at this point is to put $10 in the donation jar. Oh well, here's hoping for a busier week!

Couch Cushion Coins

I have a thing for teeny tiny charities, because you just know the person behind the effort is putting their heart and soul into it. So when I stumbled across Feed Villages, it hit all of my happy buttons: 100% of the money goes to the program, one girl in Hawaii is behind the whole thing, there's a sustainability component involved, the onsite management is local not foreign, and most of the employment opportunities are focused on women. Oh yes, and they feed poor kids in Kenya for 50 cents. You read that right - 50 cents, and there's no minimum donation. You'll probably find at least that much change buried amongst your couch cushions.

Actually, that 50 cents does quite a lot more than provide a lunch. It supports the development of local organic farming co-operatives that grow food for the lunches and for income. This project is partnered with Village Volunteers, whose larger efforts train women in farming methods, provide microfinance, and all kinds of other admirable things. I like their sustainability approach and their preference for harnessing local talent, but it looks like a huge portion of their funding comes from fees for voluntourism programs. Just wait until I have a moment to expound upon the rise of that concept...the jury in my head is still out on whether the pros outweigh the cons. But I digress.

So I took a $10 bill out of my "To Be Donated" jar and mailed it off to Elana Greene in Hawaii with a note to treat 20 kids to lunch on me. She kindly confirmed receipt by email and updated me on the development of the program: a couple of acres of land have been purchased with the assistance of Village Volunteers to get a community garden going in the first step towards her goal to feed 200,000 African children (i.e. raise $100,000). I think I might have to treat 40 next time. Oh yes, there will be a next time for this one. Maybe a few next times.

Charitable Act of the Day: Ordered raw materials and practiced sewing for a project I will write about very soon. I haven't sewn since I was in the Brownies. The only thing I've learned so far is that I should get a sewing machine.