Yet another worthy cause

So I have made a contact in Ungada who has been working on arranging a tour for me. He has been really helpful and kind and I'm really excited about the tour he is putting together for me. He happened to mention that he had a charitable project that he and a man from the UK had started and that I should check it out.
The link is http://www.gracechildrensvillage.org/ and you should check it out too! Become a fan on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Grace-Childrens-Village/117694298277567?ref=ts It is a small project, but I am amazed at how much these 2 men have accomplished in such a short amounty of time. I am definitely going to be making donations to their project as Christmas gifts for people here and I hope to go and volunteer there for a day or two while I'm travelling. I will definitely post pics!

Standard of Living

Well this email from our group leader certainly freaked me out a bit. This is the Human Development Index that looks at income, education, housing, gender, equality, population and a few other things that I've probably missed. It ranks Ethiopia as 171 of 182 contries. What stands out the most to me is where the caribbean countries are on the list compared to Ethiopia. I may be in for a shock at how little these people have and I'm not expecting them to have anything.

Other things that really stood out in the fact sheet were a life expectancy of 54.7 years, adult literacy rate of 35.9% and the percentage of the population living on less than $2 US a day is 77.5%

Its Official

I paid my bill at Woodington Lake for the tournament and I am offically $200 over my fundraising goal! Yahoo! Now that I'm done with that, its starting to set in that I am going to Africa in just a couple of months (I think my mom calculated it to be 100 sleeps as of today). I guess I'd better call the travel doctor now to get all of my shots.

You may wonder what will happen to the excess $200. It is going to go directly to Habitat for Humanity's Ethiopia chapter for the next project after mine. Of course, I'm not going to refuse any additional funds that anyone wants to donate to me, but I'm so glad that I don't have to worry about that anymore.

Tournament a success!

Well its the day after the big golf tournament and I think its safe to call it a great success! I learned lots about event planning over the last couple of months and I think I would earn a passing mark. I also learned that I may not pass in the area of event publicity. The turnout was much smaller that I had dreamed of a few months ago. I got lots of help (thanks Tim!) getting people to commit in the last couple of weeks. Overall, I am very pleased with myself for it.

There are so many great business people around who sponsored the tournament. I hope that everyone who came out will in turn look at the samples and prizes that they won and go back to those businesses and support them.

My 'people' were so awesome on the day of and in the weeks leading up to this tournament. Mom, Jody, Dan, Katie, Cynthia, Graham, Linda and Tim you are all the best!

Numbers to come this afternoon, but I think I may be very close to my fundraising goal...