The Organ Grinder’s Monkey

Sorry for not posting today. The SEO for Bloggers field test will return tomorrow, I promise.

The reason I skipped out tonight is that I spent the evening chatting over holiday treats with colleagues while signing and stuffing tons of fundraising letters for the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity 2008 Women Build here in North Carolina. I’m on the Leadership Committee for this year’s build, and this is our first big mailing. But we’re already really humming along, fundraising-wise. We’ve a huge portion of the funds we need for the build and we haven’t even had our official kick-off party yet! (How cool is that?)

Of course, any funds we raise over what we need this year means that much more of a head start for next year’s build. We ourselves are benefiting from $15,000 seed money carried over from last year’s event. If we raise enough, who knows? Maybe we could even build two Women Build homes next time! Which would be unimaginably awesome.

If you’re not familiar with Women Build, it’s an all-female-volunteer build that empowers women and lets us work together to build our community. You can learn more about Habitat for Humanity’s Women Build program here.

Being able to help my local Habitat for Humanity chapter is very meaningful to me in a personal way. When I was a child, we almost always lived in substandard housing and often had to make “heating or eating” type choices (and in some cases, even when we could afford to do both the homes were so drafty that no amount of heat short of a house fire could warm them up). The homes HFH builds come with at-cost affordable mortgages, meaning families can afford to heat, eat and still have Christmas. Plus Asheville’s homes are very energy efficient, meaning lower utility bills for families so they can save more money for things like education, retirement and medical needs. It’s help our family didn’t have access to, so I mean to do as much as I can as an adult to make sure other children don’t have to live through the same miserable winters and stifling summers as I did. (I’m the only volunteer I know of that gets weepy over installing insulation, LOL! But that’s because I know exactly what each and every square inch it means in real-life terms for the families we put in our houses.)

Just in case you’re in the mood to be extra generous this holiday season, here’s a link to the Asheville Area Habitat for Humanity Donations page. If you donate by check, please put “Women Build 2008″ in the memo line. If you donate online, there’s a drop-down box on the form that will let you specify where you want your money to go.

Thanks, and Happy Holidays!

Tags: Housekeeping, Announcements and Related Fussing About //