April 29th, 2008

April 29, 2008 (written by Jason)

So it has been way to long since I have written a blog. I am really sorry about that. It is not that I not been around a computer. It is just that every time I get around a computer I have a lot to do. You see for the past 5-6 months I have been working on making a wiki for the southern Africa region of volunteers. So pretty much everytime I step into the office I do nothing but work on that.

However a few weeks ago we officially launched the site. If you want to see what it is that I have been working on you can check it out at http://www.wikisarvn.pbwiki.com/ . It is pretty sweet and I would love to hear any constructive criticisim you have of it. It would really help us out.

So I know that many of you have already made contributions to my projects that I got going on and that is really really awesome of you all. I will have something special for you early contributors when I arrive home. However, there still is a lot of money left to be raised. We know that times are tough right now around the world (rising gas, food, etc.) and no one is immune. We have been feeling the extra strain of the rising gas prices here especially. So what better time to get together with a few family and friends and come up with a simple fundraising idea?

Here is a photo of my parents and some of their friends after a fundraiser that they did to help fund the new school building project. They called the fund raiser "Wood for Africa". You see a tree fell down at my parents place and so they decided to cut up the wood and sell off the cords. They made $700 bucks! Isn't that unbelievable?!

So if these middle aged (and some not so much middle but upper middle aged) people can spend a weekend cutting wood, what can you do?

Maybe the whole fundraiser thing though isn't your speed. Maybe you want to just give some money. Well there still is the other way of just giving us the money. You can contribute directly to the Peace Corps @ https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=632-047

We are also thinking about doing a buy-a-brick fundraising thingee. There will be different level bricks you can buy. We are thinking about doing a $10, $25, $50, $100, and up. What we will do is make a plaque to recognize you contribution (previous donors will automatically included. Although if you want to do this again, you can!). So if you want in on this action. Send me an e-mail here jason.samuelian@gmail.com

Well that just about wraps it up for me. But here is all we got so far done on the new building. We still need about $6,500. So think about what you can do!