I'm Back

I’m back.

It has been forever since I have blogged, but now that summer is coming to an end I finally feel like I have time to write about what is going on. Last time I blogged it was leading up to my mobile hunger fight that I held at a school in Redfield Iowa. It was a great experience and the kids seemed to have a great time. After all the preparation and about 2 hours of packing we were finished. We packed over 11,000 meals and as I listened to the kids talk to one another I realized that they got it, they knew that what they did was going to help a lot of people in need.

Packing Line

A lot of the girls decorated the boxes after they heard that children like to use them as beds.

These are the 2 students that donated money during my initial visit. They were the inspiration behind this mobile hunger fight.

More recently I have continued to give however, I decided that I do not want to share about all the giving that I do.  After all, you are not suppose to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing…..or something like that. Instead I will share about any charity events, other peoples giving stories, volunteering, or creative ways to give. I want this blog to be more about inspiring others to give, or advertising charities, and events. I also want to use this blog to hopefully get ideas for myself.  This blog will still be all about giving time, money, and love, but I am just going to take a slight turn down a different road.

So since it has been a long time since I have blogged, I have plenty that I can write about. I think I will go with the most recent event that I attended.

Stephanie Roy is a friend that I met through Jaime while she was in college. Stephanie seems to really like the idea of Give(3) so she is constantly giving me ideas, which I love. Unfortunately she had so many ideas over the summer that I could not attend due to work and other pre-scheduled summer time activities. The most recent idea that she gave me was to attend this event called 100+ Dudes Who Donate. Stephanie knows about this because she is always volunteering. It seems like she has some place to volunteer almost every week. I believe she heard about it through an organization called 100+ Chicks for Charity. So last month I attended 100+ Dudes Who Donate. It was held at a country club in Des Moines. The meeting started with a cocktail hour where I tried to meet as many people as I could. It wasn’t easy pushing myself into conversations with complete strangers, which was a surprise to me because I am usually pretty good at that. Little did I know this organization was still in a building process, and it was only their second meeting. It was harder to meet people because the 15 or so people who showed up seemed to all know each other. After cocktail hour were the presentations. Anyone who attends the meeting can nominate a charity within the Des Moines metro area. They then pick 3 entries, and those people get up and talk about the organization and all the great things they do. This particular meeting only had one entry.  The presenter was Eric Branstad, and he spoke about the Des Moines Playhouse. After the presenters are done, in this case one presenter, everyone votes for one of the three organizations. When a winner is selected all of the meetings attendees, if they choose give a fifty-dollar donation to that organization. All and all it was a good experience and I will attend again in the future. 100+ Dudes Who Donate meet 4 times a year and the next meeting will be held in December.  Here is a link to 100+ Dudes Who Donate also you may be interested in 100+ Chicks for Charity and 100+ Men on a Mission.