All the Joy that is Mine Today

You know how good it feels to give money to charity? And, even though it probably shouldn’t, it sort of does feel better to give $100 than $50. Right? And, doesn’t it feel better to give to a charity that you know something about, rather than one you’ve never really heard of, or one that you’re not quite sure what they do? Okay, so take those two feelings and compound them by about a thousand, because in my case it’s not just that I’m the one who solicited the money and got to feel good watching you all donate over the course of the last month or so, or that it’s a charity that I know pretty well… it’s also that I’m the one in charge of the project and I LIVE in the charity. It means that I’m the one, working with your funds, who gets to watch the community get something it needs, and who gets to be completely accountable to donors back in the US. It means that I have given you my word, and that you have put your trust in my belief that this is a major problem, one that is so bad that it requires your generosity immediately. It means that people trust me, both my community members and my friends and family back home; $4,541 worth of trust you all have in me, and we all know exactly how I’m going to spend the money.

It’s an incredible feeling.

And I’m very happy to announce that today all of the money needed to make the stoves has been raised!

So now it’s just a matter of time before I can get the check from Washington, deposit it in a new bank account, and go to the hardware store to buy the supplies we need. Then the hardware store will deliver them soon after, and we’ll distribute the supplies to the homes where stoves will be constructed, and then we will get to work on the stove construction! And all because you helped me to fundraise, either by donating, convincing someone else to donate, getting the word out, or a combination of the three!

So now that this grant is filled, does that mean that there won’t be another opportunity to help support my work here?

No. I will soon have available online another grant to help with furniture and materials for the library. (I applied for and received a grant from USAID to pay for the construction materials, but we need to furnish the building and get some more library staples such as a set of encyclopedias.)

And, if you’d like to put off a financial contribution for a little while, some fellow volunteers and I are working now on a youth conference which will be held in August to celebrate diversity. I participated in the conference last year (it’s called “Celebrating the Cibao”) and it was a huge success; the two kids from my town who went with me both had an incredible time. (The conference was even written up in the Peace Corps newsletter!) We will be soliciting money for that conference from spring until we’re raised all we need. (The volunteers set the individual goal of raising about $100 each, so if just 10 of you donated $10 this summer, I’d get my part completed in no time. This year I was responsible for sending thank you letters on behalf of our group and we included a picture of the kids at the conference in the shape of “08.” The donations are all hugely appreciated, and are, of course, tax-deductible.)

So thank you! People have congratulated me, but I really want to say to you Congratulations! I’m so incredibly thrilled and am honestly at a loss to what could feel more rewarding than what I described above. I encourage you all to come see the stoves, or consider coming to help build them because that might be the next best thing to getting to be the one in my flip flops right now. Seriously. Thank you a thousand times! Or, four thousand, five hundred and fifty one times!