Write Our Future update

For those of you who may not be following the blog for our social impact venture Write Our Future, I wanted to repost the news from WOF's most recent update. You can find WOF at www.writeourfuture.org and subscribe to our posts, and we are also on Facebook.

Hello 2012!

It is no understatement to say that 2011 was a tremendously successful inaugural year for Write Our Future. Our deepest thanks go to our many donors who helped us to raise the funds to feed more than 106 children at the No-ofisi Primary School and Jujurha Education Centre in the Eastern Cape.

In November 2011, WOF team members Brendan and Rebecca took a trip to the Eastern Cape to meet with the Bulungula Incubator (BI) staff and visit the school feeding program. It was incredibly special to see the faces of these happy, nourished children and our meetings with BI planted the seed for our 2012 initiative.

Jujurha Education Centre

To see more pictures from our visit to the Eastern Cape, visit our Facebook page by clicking here. While you're there, become a fan of WOF so you can stay up to date on our latest news.

The 2011 year-end report has been sent to our donors. If you would like to receive a copy please email writeourfuture@gmail.com. We would be happy to send one to you!

Lastly, we'd like to introduce you to Asali Zintoyinto.

The Bulungula Incubator has created a scholarship program that will be supporting seven children from the Jujurha Education Centre from 1st grade through the completion of 12th grade. WOF has committed to raising the funds to see one of these scholars, Asali, through graduation. Full details will follow in a separate blog post. In the meantime, if you would like to donate to Asali's scholarship fund:

1. Visit the Bulungula Incubator's donation page here, and select that you would like to support education/ the scholarship fund. Donations can be made with any major credit card.
2. Email WOF at writeourfuture@gmail.com to let us know your donation amount for our records.

That's it! Two easy steps to help send Asali on her way.

With all that we accomplished together in 2011, who knows what we can achieve in 2012!

Friday movies

*sorry for the glitch with the movies- should be all better now!*

It has been a great week! Write Our Future is off the ground and doing well. As of last night we have raised funds to feed 12 schoolchildren for the year, and we trust that that this achievement will only multiply further. Thanks to everyone for their support. To keep up with our progress, go to our website (www.writeourfuture.org). From there you can click to follow us on Facebook and receive email updates- two more great ways to stay connected!

Since it is Friday and since we are off to the movies tonight, I wanted to share a couple of home videos with you. The first is from my family's visit to Cape Town. On New Years Eve we had dinner at an awesome restaurant at Spier wine estate called Moyo. We sat in a treetop table and enjoyed all the fun entertainment...some of us more than others as evidenced by this video.

The other is of our super nephew James having a bit of fun by the pool with Brendan. This might just have to make another appearance with the little fella turns 21!

We are off to see Black Swan tonight. There is a significant delay in the release of movies here as compared to the US, so I hope we can at least get most of the top contenders in before the Oscars roll around. We saw Winter's Bone (good, albeit depressing) on Tuesday, and are off to see The King's Speech next Friday. Do you have any favorite Oscar contenders?

Write Our Future

Brendan and I are very excited to announce the launch of our social impact organization: Write Our Future. It is an organization currently working to support existing programs that provide educational opportunities to under-served children.

Our first outreach initiative is to support the Bulungula Incubator's school feeding program. This rural school feeds 600 children per day, but is in trouble now that the local government has suspended all funding in support of school feeding. Our goal is to raise the $8500 needed to feed 100 children for a year.

To learn more about Write Our Future and the Bulungula school feeding program, visit our website at: www.writeourfuture.org. Donations to support a child can be made directly on our website. To help us achieve this goal, please share the word with friends and family.

a teaser

Keep watching this space, all you loyal readers. Brendan and I will have some exciting news to share about our social impact work within a week! We are nearly ready to launch and we hope that all of you will get involved in our debut project.

Thanksgiving highlights

We had a whole lot of Thanksgiving this year. The cooking began on Wednesday for a tremendous feast Thursday night. Our friends Candice and Warren joined in the feeding frenzy.

The food was outstanding (if I do say so myself) and the company was even better. There was, however, one unfortunate accident. In an attempt to get a shot of us at the dinner table using the timer (as opposed to the extended arm self-snap you see above), my beautiful little camera fell to its death from the bookshelf. RIP lovely sort-of-new Canon digital elph SD1400. You were a star. I hope this bit of news will also serve as a fair warning as to why there will be a dearth of pictures on the blog for the next little while until my sweet little camera's baby sister comes to join us in South Africa later next month.

Aside from my camera's untimely demise, the night was wonderful and made even more wonderful by receiving my Christmas pressie early from my darling husband. He clearly knows me well enough to understand that I can't handle the suspense of presents. He also knows me well enough to have surprised me with this:

A Le Creuset 5 quart kiwi oval enameled cast iron pot. This is the dutch oven of my dreams. I'm so in love. I kiss this dish at least once a day. We will live happily ever after together. The end.

Saturday we had a very happy Thanksgiving-themed housewarming bash. We served Thanksgiving sandwiches (turkey, cranberry & stuffing), sweet potato "hummus", pumpkin and feta muffins, sweet potato & coconut pie, eggnog pie, pumpkin pie, and a big bowl of Thanksgiving popcorn. The popcorn (recipe here) was probably my greatest triumph. I swapped the cranberries (which I couldn't find here due to the lack of bogs in South Africa) for dried apples and pears. De-lish! People will love you even more than they already do if you give this to them.

And now it is Monday and I begin a week-long Art of Living course this evening. Started in 1981 (a good year to start things, as that is when I made my start in the world), the Art of Living is a non-profit educational and humanitarian NGO focused on stress management and service. It operates in 151 countries, and is all about helping people fully actualize their potential. I am really pumped about what I will learn and how I will grow from the instruction this week. I might also be a bit thrilled to gain access to their ashram in Bali.

Tomorrow is also the last day of Mo-vember. Oh how I have missed the sight of Brendan's upper lip.

third week of Movember

Big B is still going strong with his Movember campaign. At this point, however, I think we should be soliciting donations for my perseverance in not shaving it off whilst he sleeps. It is scratchy and funny looking. If anyone would like to support DreamWorker in sympathy for me being subject to his mustache all month, let me know! We are hoping to raise another R4000 ($570) by the end of the month, so spread the word and keep the donations coming!

For now, I will leave you with the latest pic of the 'stache. Heaven help me.

second week of Movember

Brendan is on week two of his Movember campaign and has done brilliantly on the fundraising front. His original goal was to raise R3000 (approx $440) to sponsor 30 days of work for someone through the Dreamworker Links of Love program (read more here). Well, an extremely generous donation of R3000 from Citizen Surveys (a Cape Town survey company that Brendan has worked with) has shifted that goal post to R9000 ($1320) to provide 90 days of work. Brendan has already raised a grand total of R4220, and with three weeks ahead I know he will raise a heap more.

But let's be honest...you're just interested in seeing how he looks, right? Well the wait is over.

It's like a young Tom Selleck (although if I'm being completely honest, I am counting the days until November 30).

And just in case your day needed a little pick me up, get an eyeful of this.

Our darling cat decided he wanted a bit of shade during his seventh nap of the day, so he parked himself under some of Brendan's damp hiking clothes that were out drying in our courtyard. I love the close up.

I just fell a little bit more in love with this cat.

Mo-vember

This month, Brendan is celebrating Mo-vember. Mo-vember is a charity movement that is done worldwide where men get pledges of monetary support for a month of mustache growing. These endeavors raise funds and awareness for men's health. While the concept is a bit silly, it is a great way to target male involvement using a jocular means to a very worthwhile end. Brendan is taking a slightly different angle and is raising money to support Dream Worker, a really fantastic local NGO that provides work opportunities for the unemployed. They also have a great program called Links of Love, where you can sponsor an unemployed person's day of work for R100 (approx $14) and this person will be sent out into the community to care for the elderly, tend a township garden, or assist people living with HIV/AIDS. Check them out here.

If you would like to make a pledge of support for Brendan and his future mustache send me a message. I will post updates on his progress throughout the month, but seeing as how yesterday was the first of the month I figured we needed to start with a "before" picture.

(hello, hot stuff)

I am hoping that by the time the month is over he can achieve something akin to Tom Selleck in Magnum PI...

Now that is hot (and the resemblance is uncanny)!

Don't you agree?

santa's shoebox project

Whether you buy Funny Money or The Big Issue from a roadside vendor, volunteer time at one of the city's innumerable non-profits, buy crafts that come from a social upliftment program, or donate goods or services to said non-profits, there are a multitude of ways to get involved in helping others in Cape Town. I love this daily push to be a more aware, more thoughtful, more kind human being.

Halloween isn't the huge hoo-ha here that it is in the States, and Thanksgiving doesn't exist, so we are zeroing in on the December holidays. This means charities are focusing on the festive season as well. A few weeks back I was invited to participate in the Santa's Shoebox Project. Individuals sign up to prepare a Christmas gift for a disadvantaged child. Upon receiving his/her name, age, and gender, you prepare an appropriate gift for a child who might not otherwise receive anything. Gifts are packaged in shoeboxes, with the top and bottom separately wrapped so that the child can keep it as a treasure box, while also minimizing the amount of waste paper created. Boxes are to include a toy, something educational, something for hygiene, an article of clothing, and something to eat. The organization has grown from delivering 180 shoeboxes in 2006 to 160,000 in 2009. It now operates throughout South Africa, as well as in Namibia and Botswana.

Brendan and I did two boxes, each for a four year old boy living in Khayelitsha (the fastest growing township in South Africa on the outskirts of Cape Town; for more information click here).

To read more about the Santa's Shoebox Project check out their website. For information about donations, email donation@santashoebox.co.za. I suspect you might just enjoy your holiday a little more knowing that you made it very special for a child in need.

oh happy days

Good news and happy M-Bs here.

Last night, in a fit of inspiration, we came up with the name for the NGO we plan to start in Cape Town. Plans won't be finalized until we are able to conduct a needs assessment, but it will be education based and likely focus on girls. We bought the associated domain name (we'll have a big unveiling when the time comes), and then celebrated this first step toward realization of some longer term goals.

This morning, I got word that Parker's import permit has been issued by the South African Department of Agriculture's Director of Animal Health. Woo hoo! The little one is one great big step closer to being a Capetonian.  This will be a huge relief to my parents, who would have to begin long term care duties if things didn't pan out. 

Get me to Africa!