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

We are thrilled that Lucy Woodward, Faryal Russel and Henderson Studios are working on the second annual Safari Nights (19 November) event to benefit Cura Orphanage!

Please go to Creative Visions to purchase your tickets and/or copy the link to tell your friends.

It'll be an incredible evening of music, and your presence will help support some of the vital projects we have going on in Cura.

I'll look forward to seeing you there!

-H

Letter to Sponsors and Well-Wishers

Please pardon the duplication, but a version of this letter will go to sponsors and other well-wishers this week... Please consider "following" this blog and linking it to your Facebook and other social networking; we'd love to have even more people connected to the wonderful people and work in Cura!

Please do watch for an official announcement of our Second Annual Safari Nights event, coming up on 19 November. I posted in this blog about the event last year, and we hope to build on those previous successes. At this year's event, we plan to focus our fundraising on both some very essential needs and on an exciting new proposal for adding music education to the curriculum at Cura Primary School.

For that project, we’re partnering with a non-profit called One World Chorus to offer children in Cura an opportunity to perform with and learn about children in choruses all over the globe. The project, if it’s fully funded, will be developed with teen mentor programs and even recording opportunities through its founder, award-winning Aaron Nigel Smith. Please watch for more information about this as plans come together.

Of course, whatever we begin at the primary school will be extended through the secondary school once it’s built and fully operational. Those of you who have been with us for a while know that we raised funds last year through a special west coast premier of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Since then, we’ve worked tirelessly with One Kid, One World to confirm community buy-in and get the appropriate permitting, and we’re in the process now of confirming Construction for Change as project managers for the groundbreaking in January. We’re thrilled to be on the verge of offering Cura’s children a local option for public secondary school, and I hope you’ll watch and celebrate our progress with us!

Of course, my news from Kenya is complicated by the fact that most of East Africa is suffering a drought of historic proportions. According to CNN.com, "East Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in more than 60 years, with as many as 10 million people at risk." Our children, thanks to generous sponsors and supporters like you, do not have to worry about whether they’ll have food to eat, though they are feeling the effects of the drought in indirect ways. Water is a pressing concern in the surrounding community, for example, and much of the Home’s budget has had to be recommitted to trucking in water when the rain collection isn’t sufficient. Food prices, too, in the region are fluctuating radically, and the Kenyan shilling is losing strength. The cumulative effect of this means that the leaders in the village and at our Home have to make some tough choices about what they can afford… and what they can’t.

We hope, of course, that our ongoing fundraising efforts will keep up with the need, at least on behalf of the children who are under our care. Because we’re committed to being a positive force for self-sufficiency and development, however, we feel a powerful sense of responsibility to improve the circumstances of the community as a whole.

Please know that your support, both financial and otherwise, has done measurable good – you are a partner with us in Cura’s well-being. On behalf of everyone there, I am deeply grateful.

-H

Glorious Water!

Jordan has returned to Cura, and has brought with him vibrant energy that has resulted in not only Cura's first major "Sports Day," replete with team t-shirts...

But also water, water, water!

In this blog during the summer, I wrote about the fact that water was on the minds of everyone in Cura -- how to collect it, how to pump it, how to pay for it. All of East Africa is enduring a drought, and Cura isn't entirely immune from its effects: water has to be rationed, and the community has to collaborate, for example, even to provide water to keep the primary school clean and the children fundamentally hydrated.

When the rains come, of course, our Home's tank fills quickly, and Moses, the housemothers and the children all celebrate. But what overflows or isn't captured is lost... at least it was before now. Thanks to Jordan's generous network of friends and well-wishers, not one but TWO more collection tanks have been delivered and installed in the Home's courtyard.

Feeling grateful for this thing we take for granted here at home:

and for wonderful Jordan, of course.

--H

End of Summer Update

Paige, Savannah and Danielle are gearing up for the children to return from their holiday break... but they're working with those who stuck around and generally getting a feel for the place. For more regular updates from Cura (and the rest of their Kenyan adventures), please follow their electronic journals at:

wildairafrica.wordpress.com (Savannah & Paige)
journeytheglobe.wordpress.com (Danielle)

Pen Pals, too, are eagerly awaiting the children's return for September classes -- missives from Cura are forthcoming, I promise!

Meanwhile, we're working over here to keep the One World Chorus and Construction for Change plans in motion, and we're developing plans for our Second Annual Safari Nights fundraising event in Los Angeles in early November. Do watch for more information as that gets closer, and for photos if you're unlucky enough not to be able to attend...

Wishing, as always, Cura wasn't so far away...

-H

We're back from Kenya and settling in at home... but I'm still immersed in Cura-related communication and planning. I've got this photo set as the background on my desktop, just to remind me of where we just were...

And we've got new (and very lucky!) volunteers headed there soon!

Paige, Savannah and Danielle are heading to Cura in August to begin a series of art and theater projects with the children, both between school terms and once classes begin again in September.

Jennifer will return again in November to reprise her Rotary-inspired "World without AIDS" photography and writing projects.

And Aaron and Diedre are working on plans to come to Cura in January to begin a global "Music and Movement" project with the students at Cura Primary School.

Of course, we hope Construction for Change will also be arriving after the first of the year, to break ground on the long-anticipated secondary school, as well.

These plans, and all of the details associated with them, keep me busy and thinking of Cura when I'm home -- as do pen pals and sponsors and interested well-wishers. But nothing beats being there.

-H