The great news is we’ve raised nearly $1,000 over the past 3 days for various causes related to helping the people of the Pine Ridge and Cheyenne River Reservations.

We raised an exact total of $927.36 over the past 3 days of active fundraising.

To everyone who has donated, pledged to donate, kept this issue on the recommended list, spread the word or donated educational supplies for the reservations schools thank you very much for your support. The management team at One Spirit including One Spirit director Jeri Baker and many other administrators and volunteers came here to express their heartfelt thanks for the support of the Clark community in this effort. I’m confident we will continue to do well over the course of the next several weeks leading up to Wes‘s birthday.

For those who are not familar with this fund raiser please read my initial thread that started this all, also the staff at One Spirit posted some great resources and information in the last fund raiser thread.

Please help me continue to keep track of our impact by emailing me at: jamesmitchem7 at hotmail.com. Or you can post it here on this blog or future fundraiser entries.

Simply let me know how much you donated after you donate so I can add up the amount and post the totals every evening to track our impact and post a final total on Wes‘s Birthday. And second but equally important please leave a .04 at the end of any donation to mark it as part of this fundraising effort in honor of Wes, again thank you.

Fuel assistance program:

This is an urgent need issue, it is already dipping below zero at night in South Dakota and conditions will only continue to worsen as deep winter sets in including nights with 60 degree below zero lows, 60 mile an hour winds are not uncommon, frequent blizzard conditions and day time highs are often below zero. Please help support the Vets in their efforts to provide heat for the Lakota elders and childern, $85.00 is enough to provide one cord of wood and $150.00 is enough to provide two weeks propane, additionally the government will send matching funds to provide heat for next winter, doubling you impact. Simply email Myrna Fox at: phaedrus@access.mountain.net to participate, and again thank you for your help.

Sponsorship:

You can sign up to sponsor a Lakota Native American family, elder or child. If your interested and financially able please contact Diane Capalario at: dicap1@comcast.net or you can call (603) 622-7008

Habitat for Humanity’s Pine Ridge Reservation housing fund:

You can donate to Habitat’s reservation housing fund, or you can sign up to work on helping to build homes on the Pine Ridge Reservation. All donations to Habitat are 100% tax deductible with receipt. So this is a great way for those who are of less financial means to participate in this effort.. Just visit the Pine Ridge Habitat website and choose a donation method here.

Christmas Box Program:

This is a quick and easy way to give the children of the Reservation probably the only gifts they receive all year, a check for 25$ will give one child a Christmas box, and of course if you send more than that then more children are effected. Simply make out your donation to ONE / ONE Spirit and write “Gift Box Program” into the memo line and send it to:

ONE Spirit

P.O. Box 2595

Chesterfield, VA 23832

Or if you would rather pay online make a Paypal payment to: OneSpirit@One1.org You can also assemble your own box at home, simply coordinate the delivery with One Spirit by emailing Marcia McMorrow at:

freemar@localnet.com

Project Share -Food Co-op

This is a great program to help the Lakota community have wholesome healthy foods instead of the items the BIA sends which are in large part responciable for epedemic levels of heart disease, diabetes and malnutrition, and sadly many families often find food in short supply even in this difficult time of the year. Thankfully however Project Share is a quick and easy way to make difference with only a moderate contribution. If your interested please send an email to: cbinning@uiuc.edu to participate or call: (217) 344-7474.

Thank you for your ongoing support and participation.

We have done very well so far, however every good charitable effort needs an expanding base of donors to avoid donor fatigue and increase our impact, many of our participants have already been making an effort to this end by spreading the word to the Clark Yahoo groups and going so far as spreading the word to their email lists. To everyone involved, though I cannot personally thank you all due to the success of this campaign and logistics involved I wish to express my deep appreciation for all of your support, this couldn‘t have happened without you.

However given the success of our campaign to date I’ve become a little more ambitious in my goals, I of course would not ask anyone to give more than they have, everyone here has been extremely generous in both their time and money. But I do want to take this to the next level. My aim is to bring this issue to Daily Kos, get it on the recommended list and keep it there long enough to maximize exposure to Daily Kos’s 100,000 daily reading and posting members.

In order to do that however we need a minimum of 100 recommends, and in a short amount of time. I’m already coordinating to get help from the Native American community, but the support of our many Web savvy Clarkies will be essential in this effort. I’m aiming to get a commitment for a total of 40 recommends from CCN members when I bring this issue to Daily Kos. However I am holding off for now to give time for our friends in the Native American community a chance to register there and let the one week pass that is required for a member to recommend a dairy at Kos.

I’m looking at December 10th in the morning on the east coast, however this far from final yet as I have to get feedback from the Native American community on this issue but I expect a final decision by the end of the weekend at the latest. However I would of course greatly appreciate any and all feedback on this from our members here at CCN.

Thanks to everyone for all that you’ve done and continue to do.