I do not know where to start. Three very amazing things happened this weekend!! This weekend has just been amazing.
First on Saturday, Team in training had their kickoff in Berkeley, so I woke up at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning. (sign of things to come) and went off for the kickoff. (To those of you who don’t know me well, I don’t get out of bed before 10 on a weekend.) I was very excited to meet my team members and my mentors and coaches. During the kickoff, one of the East Bay honorees “Hart” shared his story with us. He has chronic leukemia (pardon me if I don’t know the correct names here, I am writing this blog out of memory) and he has been with Team and Training participating in events, doing fundraising and fighting leukemia at the same time. In the East Bay walk/run team meeting, we also met 3 other honorees who shared their stories with us. When I saw them, I thought: “These guys look so normal…like any other person walking down the street.” For some reason, I thought they would look a little different. Note to self: If you see a stranger in a bad mood or being rude, try to be nice to them. You don’t know what they are going through. Anyway, kickoff was fun. I was a bit worried about raising money in this economy and my mentor told me that I would be surprised about how giving people are. Was she right!!
Second cool thing happened to me today. I was thinking of ideas on how to go about fundraising and thought that I should check out if someone is selling or giving away used books on craigslist and then sell them or ebay or Amazon. So when I saw an ad on craigslist which showed a ton of books for sale, I emailed asking about them. The person selling them said that she would sell it for $150-$200. I told her that I was running this marathon and was buying these for fundraising. I thought I will atleast check out those books and see if I will get something for them, so I went to the public storage where she had called me and looked at the books. All these books looked like they were in great shape and they were all great books on leadership, self help etc. I was about ready to bargain and buy them for $100(cause I was fundraising) and asked her how much she wanted for it. She sold me about 100 books atleast for (get this) $10. Yipeee!!!!!! And this was a complete stranger. What a steal!! I thought to myself. Wow, if you are truly doing something for a great cause the universe is aligned somehow to help you.
The third and most amazing thing that happened this weekend (and this is making me cry) is that someone (Anonymous donated $500 to my cause and I don’t even know who. Today afternoon before I went out to check out the books I composed my first fundraising email and sent it out to everyone on my address book and I came back and checked out my fundraising page and saw that I had raised $550. I thought to myself: “Wow so many people have donated already” and then I saw that this one person had donated $500. The suspense is just too much. I would love to thank this person from the bottom of my heart. I am soooooo grateful to you. You are amazing!!! I am jumping up and down right now. Thanks for the awesome encouragement. I am even more excited to train for the marathon and do even more fundraising. Ever since I signed up for the marathon, I was constantly wondering if I had set my goals too high: first for a full marathon and secondly the fundraising event. This is the first time I am doing fundraising of any sort. I had talks about fundraising with Jere (who herself does a lot of fundraising for the Life Strong foundation) and she had told me that she got donations from strangers and I thought to myself: “Well, she is Jere. She is a sweetheart and her energy and enthusiasm is so amazing that anyone would donate to her.” But people truly are amazing!!
What an amazing weekend!!!
6 comments:
Lol..I didn't mean to create a suspense..
Don't want to type too much here, so here are a couple of links which might help explain my behavior. (there might be better sites explaining in a better way, and for other religions too; but these were among the first hits which showed up..)
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/225650.html
and
http://www.essortment.com/all/bibletithing_rayf.htm
Haha. Ok. If you are planning on tithing next month you are most welcome to my fundraising site :)
Although I do not have any one charity too close to my heart, I mostly like to contribute towards sponsoring children and elders in my home country via cfcausa.org (almost 95% of what you give there goes towards the program).
With the PPP exchange rates being so low compared to the "real" rates, your dollars can probably get a lot more done in 3rd world countries than here. To me, one Iraqi child is equal to one American child. So if your $3600 can sponsor 10 third world kids but only one first world kid, it would be tempting to go overseas..
That said, assuming nothing much changes, I'll probably make a similar contribution to your site in Jan 2010. In the meanwhile, keep up the good work and all the very best in your efforts!
I was kidding. I am so grateful for your contribution. Yes, the same amount would mean a lot more to kids in a third world country. Health care costs in the US are way too expensive. The same amount would help a lot more people in my country get the same treatment that one person would get here. In some ways I feel sorry for people in the US who sometimes go bankrupt paying their medical bills and I feel like they need the help too. But when it comes to research, I think US is far more advanced and we need this research to come up with better cures for people all over the world.
Hmm..that's why I don't restrict myself just to CFCA. Occasionally something different like this comes along and one feels inclined to support it..
Hi - its that time of the year again. Are you fund-raising for LLS this year? Oh, and congrats on doing such an amazing job last year!
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