20 May 2007

money raised and the Post Office throws a curve

In the past two weeks we have collected about $800 from a series of sources. It's enough for "a shipment" from Chicago to PCVs in Romania for our Primary Project. Excellent!

Our latest and greatest marketing idea is to "Adopt A Peace Corp Volunteer." Though much of our fund-raising will stay generic to accomodate the entire PCV list that we have, we will ask certain groups of individuals to adopt a specific teacher at a specific school from the incoming Group 22. Personalizing the process should make the experience a little more intense for both sides.

I anticipate providing additional materials to the adopted PCVs and I will be requestiing that they pay special attention to providing photos and official thanks to the sponsors. It means one volunteer might get nine boxes of books and another might get only three. But I am confident it will be a success in the long run.

Ou focus, has by necessity shrunken to providing books almost exclusively to Romania. "For the convenience of the customer" the Post Office has ceased providing surface service and sends only by air. Air is almost three and a half times more expensive. So, as proper stewards of our resources we have to decide whether use, say $50 to send thirteen pounds of books to 'whereever' or fifty pounds of books to Romania. The answer to 13 vs. 50 is obvious.

Of course we have books to give to those who provide postage, but most won't see the value.

15 May 2007

container is filled, the primary project continues

Since my last post I have made four more trips to the storage facility and finalized adding books to the last pallet. The collection aspect of the container project is essentially finished. I am continuing to use small boxes to set aside a pallet-worth of boxes that I will toss into the freespace of the container as it is loaded. Depending on how tight the load is I may get another 80 or 100 boxes in the container.

There is a blip in the road on the fund-raising front so if you are a praying person, say a few for us. It would be truly sad if 30,000 books intended for Romania didn't get there.

The primary project continues as I am doing my first in-your-face fund-raising blitz.

I did an event a couple weeks ago near a local uniuversity with the help of an RPCV that raised about $250. The next one will be this Saturday. We will get a piece of 'the door' at a concert performance by a local radio personality's band.

The unique event coming up is a 'up-scale' wine-tasting affair. I'm over my head on this and can only hope for the best. I'm accustomed to rock & roll events where it's simply "band plays for free and I get the cover charge." I don't know how the wine & cheese event will work out, but the local Romanian wine distributor is 'in,' as are the three Romanian-born musicians from the local symphony. "Romanian + Romanians for Romanian kids" at least gives us a good hook.

Besides these events I have a few others in the works, as I attempt to build a cash reserve for the new PCVs this Fall.