UPDATE: Oke has offered to match all donations up to $200! So now is the time to donate!
The other night I posted that Thanksgiving is upon us.....and it has only been a week since Election Day.
So, we started a little marathon to help Okiciyap provide Thanksgiving dinner for 50 families of ten on the Cheyenne River Reservation.
And what do you know, even after this election, we VERY quickly got $1800 in the ChipIn and a $50 check, enough to buy turkeys and some of the fixins. If we can get to $2500, we've got enough for complete dinners.
So if you haven't donated yet, Thanksgiving dinner costs just under $5 per person this year nationwide. So we can go the rest of the way one by one for those of you who are tapped out from the election....
Remember, the unemployment rate on the Cheyenne River Reservation is about 80% this time of the year.....that is a statistic I have a hard time getting out of my mind.
On Sunday, the New England Kossacks started us off by collecting $100. Thanks everyone! It was great to meet all of you.
We had figured that just the turkeys at an average 14 pounds per bird at $1.29 per pound would be $1164. However, last time Emily checked it was $1.79 a pound, so we needed $1260 to be on the safe side.
I am totally amazed that it's only Wednesday and we already have $1850. Lets see how fast we can get to the $2500!
The families will have the dinners in their homes. Okiciyap is planning to have a Christmas dinner at the pantry (more on that after turkey day).
Here's the ChipIn.
Thank you and bless you.
For those of you whose systems don't handle flash, here is the direct link to the ChipIn.
Of course you're also welcome to send a check. If you do so, please let me know in the comments so we can keep track of how close we're coming to our goal.
You can send the checks to this address:
PO Box 172
Isabel SD 57633
One other thing....
If you can't help out now but buy your Christmas presents online, you can help Okiciyap for free by signing up for iGive. Participating stores will donate a percentage of your purchase price to the charity of your choice. No strings. You download it and a little widget sits unobtrusively in your browser, or you can just do it through their website. You will get emails when iGive generates donations for your chosen organization. They don't bug you. There are also coupons, etc.
An Update
I thought I'd update you on the pantry and food situation.
There is still mostly junk in the local food banks. This is a problem nationally, which you can find more out about in this very informative diary by Aji. Nobody knows when that situation is going to change. Luckily, Okiciyap volunteers were able to scrounge up one load of decent stuff from the local food bank. They're back to having junk food there now.
Here are some pictures from that last load.
Volunteers:
Cindy looking a lot like her sister Georgia, helping with some stuff:
Cindy's daughter Amy taking a tea break. Vice President of the pantry as a high schooler. Pretty cool.
New England Kossacks
Donation cup
We'll be posting this all week long. Lets see what we can do....
Oh and.....KOSSACKS ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!