Below is a message from my friend, Shonda, who is currently in the process of adopting her second child from Ethiopia. She asked me if I would post a message from her on my blog and I said, Sure!! So, here it is:
Hi friends,
This is Shonda from God Will Add. Ali has kindly let me take over her blog to tell you about an awesome Baby Shower like none other. A couple of my friends have teamed up and we're trying to raise funds for an organization called FOVC. They help provide aid and hope to the immediate areas where our kiddos are from, an area that has been hit hard by this horrible famine.
Shameless plug: Will you hop on over to my shower? I promise I won't make you smell mystery diapers and no I won't let you wrap toilet paper around my abdomen.
For $13 FOVC can feed one starving child for one month. So far, this shower has raised $710. If you're amazing at math like myself, you know that 54 kids who didn't have food today, will have food tomorrow and for the next month because of the generosity of a select few. Wow! Can we make it 100 kids? Will you please help me spread the word?
Why?
Of all the great charities out there, why have I chose to rally behind FOVC? A few simple reasons:
1) There are a lot of other great charities that are working to fight this famine, and I (despite my cynicism of big organizations) have supported them. But FOVC is the only NGO working directly in the areas my boys are from, and where their first families still live. Even if I liked nothing else about FOVC, this one simple fact would make me want to support them. Thankfully, there are lots of other things I like about them:
2) They are a very small grassroots organization and very conservative with their money. All their workers are volunteers, and they do all their traveling on their own dime, which means all the money we give goes directly to feeding the kids and helping their community fight poverty with long-term goals in mind.
3) I have a close friend who has done aid work with them in Ethiopia (and is on her way back in a few weeks), knows many personal details about how they operate and spend their money. She's a Dave Ramsey fiscal conservative like myself, and she fully endorses them. They have an independent bookkeeper who verifies that over 96% of the funds go directly to Ethiopia.
4) Directly from the president of FOVC: "We have an amazing team of volunteers! Our board members and officers (if I do say so myself) are doing outstanding work! We spend a lot of time and effort educating ourselves on best practices of economic development (it's what my husband does!) and strive to implement every program using best practices. This means we empower, not enable. Every effort we undertake is aimed at offering long-term sustainability, success...and HOPE
Have I convinced you they're great?
Click here and support them:
And then (this part is optional), click here and tell MB how excited you are about his arrival into our family.
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