Saturday, June 24, 2017

Day 24: Overwhelm

I'll be honest, today was a downer and an overwhelming kind of day, and I don't have much inspiration left for a blog post of any substance. I'm not feeling well, there was no progress on my charitable goal, and I'm concerned about how to make the challenge work this next four days as I have to travel to Austin tomorrow afternoon. I'll be packing up my rations in a cooler, using a friend's kitchen, and improvising to-go lunches I'll have to prepare in the morning or the night before.

In order to meet my charitable goal, I will need some of you to don the advocacy hat and challenge your friends to help us reach the goal of filling the next 21 hearts on the "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart." To quote Dr. Seuss, I'll need "every Who in Whoville to make some noise." On top of all of this, I still need to find $11,000 to meet our June fundraising goal by the end of the month, which prepares us for all the needs our programs have in the field for July. I know, you didn't come here thinking you were getting a "day in the life of a fundraiser" blog, but I just needed to be honest with you. That's where I am.

And actually, this is a good underscore to why my all-out focus is on finding more monthly donors— so that I don't have to keep putting pressure on existing donors to help meet our shortfall at the end of every month. It's a hard place to be. That's why we've got to get more monthly support and spread the burden. That's where the "Heart-Chart" comes in. Literally any amount being given monthly is that much less that we have to spend time and energy on fundraising.

But if there's one thing I want to make sure is not getting lost in translation, it's to make sure you undersand how hard our native teams work in the field to multiply your donations through their farmland and small business ventures. I believe strongly this is what sets Peace Gospel and She Has Hope apart from most other organizations focusing on similar causes as ours. If you're not aware of how we approach this, please go back to my Day 14 blog post for an explanation, and some of my favorite shots of our farmers and the kids enjoying the harvests. This is why I feel so passionate about meeting our fundraising goals: 1) obviously, for the children and trafficking survivors our work aids, and 2) to honor our native staff who work so hard by meeting them in the middle with the additional support they need to make their programs function optimally.


Thanks to your support and the success of our farmlands, our program provides her three meals a day at our school in Kampala, Uganda.


Thanks for following along and for all of your support, it's very humbling and restores my hope every day. I'm sorry I don't have a more positive blog post tonight.


Charitable goal explanation. For those of you just tuning in, I'll recap what I'm trying to achieve with the "Monthly Donor Heart-Chart" and my goal of finding 50 new sponsors for these "hearts" which I like to think of as representing lives being transformed and, ultimately, saved.

Why am I seeking monthly donors? The orphan care, child labor response, and human trafficking response programs we've pioneered at Peace Gospel and She Has Hope— while sustained in part by small business enterprise— need charitable support to be fully sustained. The budgets of these programs have fixed, monthly expenses. Thus, while one-time donations are deeply appreciated, it's the monthly donations that give us something to count on and plan with. Therefore, long-term, they're the most powerful.

If you're willing to make a small monthly sacrifice of any amount to help ensure that the following merciful actions are fully funded each month, I would be grateful for your partnership with me in this effort. With your help, our monthly budget enables us to…
  • Provide resident care for 290 orphans in 11 homes in Asia and Africa
  • Operate 4 schools and 4 after-school care programs reaching over 1000 children
  • Serve approx. 50,000 fresh meals to children in our programs
  • Train 100s of girls how to avoid the dangers of human trafficking
  • House, rehabilitate and empower 20 girls recovering from human trafficking

On to what I was able to create with just $1 worth of food today. Since I only have two more servings of oatmeal, I opted for a breakfast taco this morning. These are delicious little creations and if I had to guess, probably only cost about $0.20 to make. Oops, I just realized that I used 4 corn tortillas today. That means one day this week I will have only 2 instead of my previously ration plan of 3 per day. Preparing lunch at my mom's house was perhaps a good dress rehearsal for what meal-prep is going to be like in Austin the next 3.5 days.

Click or tap on image to enlarge...

Breakfast.


Lunch.


Dinner.


Take Action!

1) Please consider helping me reach my goal to find 50 new "Sustainers"— donors willing to give a small amount each month toward our work helping vulnerable children and trafficking survivors. Learn more and sign up here!

2) Please visit my unofficial sponsor, Amazon.com through this link. 7% of your purchases made through the link are given to the work of Peace Gospel's programs helping orphans, at-risk children of the slums, and human trafficking survivors.


3) If you're compelled by my effort here, please share it with friends. One of the main goals is awareness. So if you can help with that, huge.

4) Leave me feedback. Please comment on this post, especially if you have any ideas about what I should try to cook with these ingredients I have available. I love hearing from you! It really helps!

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for your honesty and sharing your heart. 💛♥️. If anyone can do it, it's you!

    ReplyDelete