Hi!
Ok, first of all, thanks for your patience! while we worked out our difficulties with PayPal. You are now able to donate again. Donations will now have to be in the name of an individual (Marita Whalen, the bike tour's creator and principal coordinator), as opposed to the GAD committee.
To donate, simply go to www.maritawhalen.blogspot.com. Click on the PayPal link and follow the steps.
AND, drum roll, please......We've already raised a little over $2,500 towards gender and development projects! Woohoo!
Thanks to everyone who has donated! We've had some very generously-sized donations, but many donors gave in denominations of $5, $10, or $20 dollars. It just goes to show how it can all add up!
I, personally, am incredibly excited about what this is going to mean for gender and development projects in BF. The GAD committee is going to be able to give out more--and bigger--grants to volunteers all around the country.
We have LESS THAN TWO WEEKS before we head off into the Burkina sunrise on our bike tour! We will kick off our tour on the night of September 5th in Pô with a soccer game, a symbolic tour around the city, and other festivities. Early on the morning of the 6th, we will head out for our first day on the road.
We'll keep you updated as we go along, with pictures and results of who's first to beg to ride in the Peace Corps car (I'm pretty sure it'll be me). :)
Some suggestions. Apologies in advance, if you have already worked on this.
ReplyDelete1. It will help your cause to point out very clearly that all donations can be used for tax deductions as per U.S. law. Following is a link to IRS website:
http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc506.html
2. A good way to use the donation money could be Micro finance, following the Grameen Bank model, originated in Bangladesh, but repeated in India and even some countries in Africa. A how-to approach from Grameen Bank can be found in the following link:
http://www.grameenfoundation.org/what-we-do/microfinance/microfinance-basics
Further as there are peace corps volunteers in villages living with local families, if every volunteer can help one family, and maybe one village that would be the best solution for gender equality – financial independence for women.