Southern Philippine Children’s Shelter

We are heading back to the Philippines to visit the family. While there, I hope to look for a small place to rent so that we have a home for the Shelter. We’ll be there for two months. School is just completed and with some time off, I hope to reflect on where we’ve been and where we are going. I’m looking forward to some slow days to sit back and think and have a cup of coffee with a juicy ripe mango. I haven’t had any days like that lately. After I get the internet connection working, I’ll be posting here and over at siyensya.

Last week something good happened. I filed our federal IRS form 990-N, an electronic e-Postcard, and it was accepted. This is good news as we are in compliance with all the IRS rules. It wasn’t too hard to do, but I was very busy with school at the time.

While in the Philippines, I hope to outline a plan of action for more fundraising.

Possibilities include:

• More days giftwrapping at Borders in November and December
• Implement a car donation program
• Sending fundraising letters to individuals (I’m reading the book How To Write Successful Fundraising Letters, by Mal Warwick)
• Having a walkathon or 5k race
• Pennies donation

I’m also taking the book Effective Fundraising for Nonprofits, by Llona Bray. I hope to get some other good ideas that will help us. Take care. Till next time..

Our friend, Tom, who works for Five Star Shipping came over last night and took the two boxes. Each weighs about 100 pounds and they are both filled to the top with good quality children’s clothing and child shoes and sneakers. He said they will be brought to the shipping facility in New York and will be loaded next week. This type of box is called a Balikbayan box. They should arrive in Digos, Mindanao the end of July or beginning of August, approximately 60 days. The cloths will be distributed as soon as they arrive.

We are still collecting clothes for the clothing drive. We now have taken in enough to fill one balikbayan box and we will start packing another. Balikbayan is Filipino for “back to the Philippines” We can pack the boxes with as much as we can stuff in as the weight doesn’t matter. We hope to ship the two boxes at the end of May so they arrive sometime in July. Till next time…

My duties as a MathCounts and Science Olympiad coach at school are completed. Both of these had competition in March. The MathCounts team did very well and placed in the top half of the competition at the state level. I’ll now have a little more time to work on some other projects here at the SPCS.

We are now collecting clothes and shoes to send at the end of May. With the price of rice increasing, many are left no money to buy clothing. We will try to gather enough to fill two balikbayan boxes. We have taken in some clothes so far but we are looking for more.

The food drive is not going so well. We have had a few donations but we are not near our goal. Last week I did finish the Google application for their nonprofit ad program. We should hear for them within three to six months. Till next time…

We are now seeking donations for the June 2008 food drive. Our goal is $1,000.00. We hope to feed more than two hundred children. We will distribute rice, fish, and some sugar and can goods. Like our last food drive in December, 2007, the food will be distributed in plastic bags. Check out the photos from our first food drive below. After the 2007 drive, we still had people coming and asking for food, but we ran out at 175 food rations. Hopefully, we will reach our goal.

We had a good start before Christmas as we were able to do some fund raising. Our first food drive went well considering the time restraints on all of us. Also, right before Christmas, my mom died. This has been huge emotional drain on me. So because of this , we have had some down time and not much has happened since. I’ve had some time to think about where we want to go and I thought of some ideas. I bought some new software called screenflow that can record the desktop. It works very well, but only on a Mac with 10.5 Leopard. I want to get some videos on our site as I think that would help with our message. Till next time…

We distributed food to over 170 families today, December 24th. Each food bag consisted of about two kilograms of rice, two cans of sardines, two pieces of noodles, a package of Milo, one bar of soap, half kilo of sugar and one bag of crackers. Some thought that we would give out just some candy and crackers but were very happy to receive rice and the other foods. We planned on 150 originally and held an extra twenty bags just in case others came after, and it’s a good thing we did as we exhausted our total supply. Unfortunately, we had to turn away some but all in all it was a success.

I’m happy to say that we reached our goal of $500 for the Christmas eve food drive. Our total was almost $700. and we sent close to 27,000 pesos. This represents a start for our company and a dream that we can do great things and make a positive change.

We spent two days at Borders gift wrapping and we thank them for this opportunity. We missed one day because of a snowstorm. We are organizing and implementing the purchase of food at this moment and the plan is to distribute these items with a number system. Each family will get a ticket with a number and we will also buy some extra rice for any who show up without a pass. I will have an update on this within a few hours. Again, thank you for your kind donations.

This past Saturday we worked at Borders Books and gift wrapped many gifts. It was a long day but we took in some donations that made it worth it. I want to thank all our friends that came out to help us as we were there from 9am till past 11:15 pm. Also thank you Borders Books for giving us this opportunity.

We were slow at first for the first hour, but after that we were very busy the rest of the time. I now feel much more confident in my gift wrapping techniques. Many people were sympathetic to our cause and wanted more information about us. It was good day all around.

I got a call the other day from Borders Books inviting us to come and join their Gift Wrap for Charity program. I accepted and so we’ll be at the Borders store near the Viewmont Mall in Dickson City, Pa. I’ve been busy rounding up volunteers to help as we’ll be there all day. So come to Borders and buy some books and gifts and get them gift wrapped. We will accept donation for this service as it will all go to our first food drive scheduled for December 24th. Thank you Boarders.