Fundraising as 2011 comes to a close...

I have three exciting announcements regarding Cura-fundraising, and a plea for your help spreading the word.

One is a reminder about the Safari Nights event coming up next weekend: 19 November in Los Angeles. It's not too late to buy tickets, so please consider joining us!

http://creativevisions.org/events/cura-safari-nights.html

The second is a new Kickstarter campaign we're thrilled to be part of: it's One World Chorus and its plan to connect with the children in Cura in 2012.

Please don't miss this amazing original song by Aaron Nigel Smith and the information about the program we're implementing for music education and global communication for Cura Village!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/oneworldchorus/aaron-nigel-smith-and-one-world-chorus?ref=email

The third announcement is an invitation to a holiday event ho

sted by our friends at Burning Torch, also in Los Angeles. Burning Torch, Inc. has been a generous supporter of our work in the past, and the fashion

company is making Cura Orphanage the recipient of its holiday cheer this year. Please consider joining us there, too, on 8 December:

November Musings

In partnership with Creative Visions and Lucy Woodward and well-wishers from all over the west coast, I'm busy preparing for the upcoming Safari Nights event... and marveling at the progress we've made in Cura over the past year. Despite the profound challenges presented by the drought in East Africa, Moses and the housemothers are providing a supportive, healthy Home for the children to live in and thrive.

We hope that the funds raised at Safari Nights will continue the momentum this year has built, and will allow us not only to expand the programs already in place but also implement a school lunch program at Cura Primary School and kick-start a music-education program that will carry over to the secondary school (scheduled to break ground this January!).

If you can't make it to the Safari Nights event in person, please consider purchasing one of these "lunch bags," hand-made by Diedre, one of our partners with One World Chorus. Your $20 purchase will help feed a Cura child who currently comes to school without lunch...

Please contact me at hayden@curaorphanage.org if you're interested; we'd like to raise funds to implement the school lunch program in time for the start of the new academic year in January!

We're also thrilled to announce that Cura now has internet! We'll be making some changes to our Pen Pal Program so that there can be more direct communication between the Cura children and their friends in the west... so watch for more information on that soon.

Here's hoping I'll see many of you at the 19 November event -- and many thanks for the support you've already shown for Cura this year,

H