Thanks to everyone who donated to the Women of Kireka project

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Thanks to everyone who donated to the Women of Kireka project

Submitted by TMS Ruge on Friday, 27 February 2009No Comment

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WE HEART SOCIAL MEDIA
Thanks to the generosity and enthusiastic support of all our Twitter supporters, family and friends, Women of Kireka quickly tipped their $1,000 fund-raising campaign at The Point in less than 18 days. As Siena stated, after a lengthy conference call, Project Diaspora decided to lower the fund-raising goal to $1000 due to the stressful economic situation in hopes of raising the $1000 by March 1st. What we didn’t count on was the generous willingness of everyone who donated to pass on the message for others to donate as well. The result was a deluge of good-hearted giving and social media putting its best foot forward.

For the first time, we saw the power of social media pushing this campaign to the “tipping point”. To some, this might not be a massive accomplishment, but to us, it is a massive first HOOOrah! into the many projects that we have on tap here at PD. As noted in our list of things one should know about development projects, this is very much a manageable budget, with manageable goals for our first project.

Our next step is a strategic review of our planned use of the funds that you have generously awarded the women. We will have a budget and timelines in the coming weeks. Thanks to everyone who donated. We hope to have some training activity on the ground in the first weeks of March ‘09 with continued escalation of updates.

OH BUT THERE’S MORE…
On my visit to see the women for the first time last December, I had shot some video at the quarry. The footage went missing and I had a sinking feeling that I had left it in Uganda. This week, while cleaning off my desktop (I love a clean desktop), something told me to double-check an untitled folder before I deleted it.

Boom! Gold!

So it is my pleasure to share the videos with you. They have been uploaded to our newly-minted Youtube channel. Here’s one of those videos. You will have to excuse the goofy-haired, blabbering host. He’s new at this.