Some More Charities!

Does anyone know if there is a way to make a poll online here so we can decide which charity to donate to? It would be a good way to get people to actually use the blog- and it's more organized than a poll taken at a meeting.

Anyway, here are a two other charities I have found: 

Global Impact's Darfur Crisis Fund 

This group donates to a few different Darfur-related charities, however, I don't know how much we really want a middleman involved.

Kids For Kids

This charity is aimed at improving the lives of children in the remote villages of Darfur. It is unique because instead of focusing on the refugees themselves, the aim is to help prevent people from becoming refugees in the first place. It's a British charity, but they accept donations in American dollars, too.

PS- This article was interesting and yet disgusting at the same time. Louis Vuitton is suing the "Divest For Darfur" Charity for using a bag that resembles a Louis Vuitton design in a highly circulated picture. It's not like this organization was using it to profit personally, you'd think that a company would WANT positive advertising connections to such a great cause. 

Well, that's all I have to say for now. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!

Organizations

Along with the organizations mentioned by Jen and Sharon I found an organization that we could potentially donate to.

Divest for Darfur (http://www.savedarfur.org/page/content/index/) is different because the money goes towards encouraging investment firms to withdraw investments from companies that help fund genocide in Darfur.

Donations

Hey Everyone,

I found some organizations that I think we can use to choose from to donate the money:

1. 24 Hours for Darfur - The money will go directly toward Darfur to help the people there and it will also go towards creating videos to help aware more people as to what is going on in Darfur.
Website: http://www.24hoursfordarfur.org/main.php

2. Eyes on Darfur - The contributions will go directly towards the people in Darfur and this organization is linked with Save Darfur.
Website: http://www.eyesondarfur.org/index.html

3. Team Darfur - This organization is an internation coalition of athletes who are dedicated and committed to creating awareness about the actions in Darfur. The contributions will go directly to Darfur.
Website: http://teamdarfur.org/

- Jen Attard

Donations

Hey guys,
I was looking for a few places that we might consider donating the money we raised and I found a few.

1) STAND - It's a genocide intervention network and you can specifically donate money for the crisis in Darfur. (http://www.standnow.org/)

2) International Rescue Committee - The money goes toward providing health care for the refugees, education for them, and they have a large list of the things they have accomplished such as setting up camps, providing clean drinking water, shelter, etc. (More can be found about what they do here, http://www.theirc.org/media/www/how-the-irc-helps-in-darfur.html).
Main link: http://www.theirc.org/special-report/darfur-growing-violence.html

3) Human Rights First: Hope for Darfur - Their campaign is to stop arms to Sudan through the enforcement of embargo's. (http://www.hopefordarfur.org/)

There are a few others that I found but they seemed to be religiously linked (such as Hillel), so I didn't include them.

- Sharon:)

Meeting Summary - November 21, 2008

We had a very serious meeting today....all business! Here's what we discussed:

Comedy Hypnosis Recap/Debriefing:
- We raised $959 (this is the profit after paying Dr. Mike)

- We need to decide where to donate the money. Last year, we donated the money to HelpDarfurNow.org and we have also donated to the solar cookers. Please research potential beneficiaries and post your ideas on the bog. At our next meeting, December 12th, we'll make a decision.

- We also discussed the importance of staying in the jobs that were assigned to you. While the event went very well, there were some instances of people leaving their posts and even leaving money unattended. This cannot happen again.

- Also, for future events, please keep in mind that money is collected in different boxes for a reason. Please do not combine concessions money with admissions money, etc.

New Rules/Procedures:
- We discussed the fact that the club is quite numerous in members and, unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to know everyone. Also, some students may show up for one meeting and then not attend again. When we hold events, we agreed that in order to work the event and/or recieve a "member discount" on admission, a student would need to have attended 50% of our previously scheduled meetings. The "member discount" would be usually half the price of admission (depending on the event) OR a member could contribute by baking, bringing a dish of food, or some other possible way.

Ideas for the next meeting:
- Discuss other people leading the meetings, possible news updates at the meetings, and other people doing these blog summaries.

- Start/continue planning the scavenger hunt, the Dine-Around, and other potential events.

- School Awareness will continue with the display at the next meeting too.

We are not meeting again until Friday, December 12th. That is two weeks away. From now until then, USE THE BLOG!!!

After the Hypnosis Show

Thanks to everyone who helped last night. Things went well and we raised some good money. More details to come.

Whenever anyone sees a Comedy Hypnosis show flyer up, please take it down and put it in a recycling bin! Thanks.

Meeting Summary - 11/14/08

Our primary focus today was to prepare for the Comedy Hypnosis show. We signed up for jobs, made signs for the concession table, etc.

The School Awareness team also worked on the display by the library.

Baking

I thought I'd start a list of who can bake for the comedy hypnosis show. Please comment if you can bring something and what you are bringing. Thanks!

Meeting Summary - November 7, 2008

Here's what we did/discussed:

- Safe Halloween Recap - It went well, low turnout from the community. We did have a presence and got the word out to some.

- Can people please research where to get a banner made? We have the electronic file we just need to get ideas as to size and pricing.

- Erin is to be commended for her work to get a grant through her church. They are awarding $600 to purchase solar cookers. Way to go!

- SaveDarfur.org sent a letter acknowldeging our donation from May of 2006!

- CLUB PHOTOS are scheduled for Wednesday, November 12th at 1:00pm. WEAR GREEN.

- Comedy Hypnosis show is NEXT Friday, November 14th. We need to hype this up all week. Tell your classes/friends/teachers. We decided that teachers should only have to pay $5 admission. For everyone else, it is $7.00. The show starts at 7:00pm but we need to be there by 6:00pm to get ready. At our meeting next Friday, we will have people sign up for jobs. We will need people to work the door collecting the admissions money and stamping hands, we'll need people to work the information table (where we will have the tri-fold board, the pamphlets, and the water jug for donations), we will need people to work the concessions table (bring a baked good!), we will also need people to coordinate the 50/50 raffle. Erin brought in a roll of tickets that we can use and we still have our raffle box from the dine-around. In addition, we need to get someone to work the lights in the auditorium. Plus, Ginny said she'd prepare a speech/introduction and we also discussed having a slide show as the audience is waiting for the show to start. We also need to think about where we want the proceeds to go.

This week to prepare for the hypnosis show we hung up more flyers, the suggestion was made to see if we could leave a stack of flyers at the school store, and there was a mention of the show in the Smithtown News (thanks, Dan!).

The School Awareness group also worked on the display by the library.

So, as usual, lots to do! Baked goods for Friday, research banners, promote the hypnosis show, wear green for club photo on Wednesday, think about organizations/causes to donate money to from the hypnosis show.