A Helping Hand for Simba Women

FINAL POST

noreply@blogger.com (Webstress Jen) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:00:00 +0000

ATTENTION!

Karama House now has new mediums to introduce you too...

Our new website:
www.karamahouse.org

On our blog page, we host a widget that links to our new blog:
http://karamahouse.blogspot.com

So check out our new mediums!
The Simba Women blog will be suspended after this post.
Set your RSS functions to read from our new blog!

Thanks!

Tax Write Offs

noreply@blogger.com (Larissa) — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 04:40:00 +0000

I know that this post comes pretty quick after the last one, but I just can't keep more good news to myself. Since UBC has decided to be our "umbrella" (love the analogy Liz), we will now be able to accept donations that will be considered tax write offs. UBC has agreed to help us with the accounts and will do so until we have everything done to establish ourselves as a non-profit.
If you, or someone you know wants to give a donation, a check should be sent to UBC. The address is:
University Baptist Church
1701 Dutton Ave
Waco, TX 76706
Make sure though, that "Karama House" is written in the memo line. Otherwise, the church wont know that it is for our project and will assume its for the church.

If there are any other specifications please include a note saying what the money is for. If for instance, the donation is meant for sponsorship for the girls, just write that in. If it is intended for the purchasing the house, school fees, etc. make a note of it and we will be sure and put it in the right place.

We will continue to have the PayPal up, but it would be best for larger donation/those who want tax write offs to send a check to the church.
So with all of that said, tell EVERYONE!!
We are so excited about the progress and the participation. You guys continue to amaze us and we know that these girls will have a new understanding of what family love really is.

Trumpet: Da-Da-Da-DAAAAA!!!!!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (Webstress Jen) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:41:00 +0000

Hey all!

We've got 3 exciting pieces of news that we want to announce.

#1 After inquiring the opinions of many... the new name choice for what was formerly known as "Simba Women" is now:

Karama House

In Swahili, "Karama" (noun)means:
1 gifts, blessings
2 talents
3 Gracious gift from God

and in Arabic, Karama means �??Honor, dignity�??

We dig Karama! Thank you everyone for your input and your patience. So in the future we'll be refereing to what was formerly known as "Simba Women" as "Karama House." And, soon we'll be in the process of buying our URLs and building an improved website. So don't be thrown off when you hear the new name. Get excited!

#2 UBC has agreed to be our umbrella organization for the Karama House project! We are thrilled to partner with them and we couldn't be happier that they have supported our mission through words and deeds.

Both of these things have been two major hurdles for our organization. This means that we can hit the ground running hard in the next few weeks. This week we'll be talking with UBC leadership and working with them to define their role in Karama House.

#3 Also... La and I will both be in Waco this upcoming weekend. We will have an informal meeting and we'd like to invite those of you who've expressed an interest in Karama House (Simba Women) to come talk with us after church on Sunday, November 4th. More details about this will be coming soon.

In the meantime, have a great week everyone!

-La and Liz

The latest off the wire...

noreply@blogger.com (Webstress Jen) — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:24:00 +0000

Hey everybody!

Here's the latest news in a few easy-to-digest bites:

UBC is having a L-Team consideration meeting on Sunday about partnering with us
Larissa and I will be at UBC in Waco on November 4th and we will be holding an interest meeting... more details will come soon.
There is a partially completed document, the "Simba Women Vision Plan" available through Adobe's "Share Beta" program at the top of this blog. Read through what we've put together so far.
No update on the name yet, so for now we are sticking with Simba Women until we can think of something more fitting

We've set up an email address for the public to email us at, it is: simbawomen@hotmail.com

Send some mail our way! We welcome any ideas and suggestions.

Thanks!

An update (of sorts)

noreply@blogger.com (Webstress Jen) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:00:00 +0000

Hey all!

UBC!

Well La and I have listened to your comments and heeded the advice of emails. Based on that we have decided to try and partner with UBC to handle the accounting aspect of the project.
We understand the structure of UBC's leadership and expect that in the next few weeks they will be running our proposal by the other members of their leadership team. In the meantime we will be talking with them and explaining our goals. We will also try and get an idea of their preferred level of involvement in the project and be working out the nitty gritty details of setting up our financial accounts.

The Name Game

Okay... a number of us have racked our brains, annoyed our friends, and have become totally disillusioned -- all in the effort to figure out a name other than "Simba Women" for our organization/the House. We need help! This week please spend time thinking or talking aloud with friends about potential names for our organization. It would be great if everyone could post a few ideas sometime soon.

Let me explain a little better why we are pushing so hard to get the right name. La and I have been setting up 2 facebook pages, a myspace account, social networking sites like reddit and digg, and we've been using "Simba Women" as our temporary name. This is okay...for now. But we want to get started on a full-fledged website soon... and rule #1 for getting a website is figuring out a URL that isn't taken. We'd like to purchase a URL that includes the name of our organization. So, we're in a bit of time crunch. We've got the site to develop, web banners to create, letterhead to brand, fundraising initiatives to put-together & we need a working name to do it! So again... think about what this House and Project will mean and get creative.

A few rules:

we don't want hallmark names (no "Hope's Home" or "Vision Institute")
we don't want it to include a female reference (no "women" "girls" "ladies", etc)
think of analogies (example: Season House) because a season changes- much like the house will be a place where change can happen
think of acronyms

A model organization we'd like to pattern our name after would be Invisible Children. Their name creates a vision and it affronts the person who hears it or sees it because they think "hmmm....children aren't invisible." And then after exploring the organization they see that IC is championing the rights and quality of life of children who have been forgotten and taken advantage of in Uganda. It's a smart name!

Here's some terms that we want the name to sort-of describe, but aren't necessarily useful names because they aren't brand-able or catchy. Don't feel limited to these terms by any means!!!!!

Phase
Training
Building
Structure
Education
Roots
Future
Help Kenyans help themselves or other Kenyans
Transition

Well, in the meantime have a great Monday! We're going to post again soon- so remember to check the blog.

Its Go Time my friends!

noreply@blogger.com (Larissa) — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:12:00 +0000

Hey folks!
Well I just received some news that I think will be fantastic for our project. Like I had said in the last post, I was suppose to talk to two organizations today and see if they would be willing to let us hop on with them. I did indeed talk to both of them and they said they would be more than thrilled to support us, not necessarily financially but it will allow us to receive substantial donations legally. This will also give us the opportunity to receive grants and any other financial help from the government. Most of all, it will help speed things up. I cant stress enough how much I personally want to get as much funding as possible so that we can get the girls in school on time. I realize that getting all of the money for house is going to be quite a challenge in itself, let alone in six months. With that said, I know someone who is willing to rent an apartment in Nairobi for the girls to live in until we get all the money for a house.

Okay so with all of that said, its time to decide. Which organization should we go with... UBC http://www.ubcwaco.org/ my church I went to in college, or WME http://www.wme.org/ the organization I worked with in Kibera coaching basketball. Check out the websites, see what you think, and post a comment to let us know! If you don't think that either of them would be suitable, post that too. We all need to know what the opinions are out there. We don't have a lot of time to decide on this due to the fact that as soon as we decide, we can post on either website and start getting donations. Lets give ourselves by Monday to decide. Alright, lets get to work people! Woo!

Welcome to our blog!

noreply@blogger.com (Larissa) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 00:58:00 +0000

Hey guys, just wanted to know that we have this blog set up for all of you that want to be involved in the organizing of this project. You will get an email every time there is a new post so you can stay updated. This will be used instead of all the mass emailing so that everyone will know whats going on, and hear about all the new ideas. We are hoping that this will make things more productive and a bit more fun than the email tag. So as the posts go up, please post comments to let us know what you think and share any new ideas you have. Thanks again for all of your participation. There is no way we could have gotten this far without all of you.

As of right now, its really looking like starting our own organization is going to take much longer than we had thought. The reason we are on a time crunch here is because the girls graduate in December and get their grades back in late January, early Feb. With that, they need to start school in March. So as you can see we need to get things going as soon as possible. We would hate for them to have to start school late and have to play catch-up. Also, this will put an extra burden on the Shelter to keep them there and feed them while they wait for us.

So the idea is to see if we can get an already established organization to pick us up. There are two that may be prospectives and we are going to contact them tomorrow to see what they think. We are really hoping that even if we merge with an organization, we can keep everyone that wants to be involved with the project, working with us. You guys have been such a great help, we want to make sure that you are still involved.

If there are any suggestions for organizations that may find this to be a good idea and want something to do with it, let us know. Just post a comment and we will check it out. Thanks again for all of your continuous support and we hope to hear from all of you soon!

Inaugural Post

noreply@blogger.com (Webstress Jen) — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 05:15:00 +0000

Welcome to our blog site. This is an open forum and a safe space. The type of conversations we hope to enter into should spark a lot of different ideas. This is a good thing that we'd like to encourage. Please be polite to the ideas of others, but free feel to provide constructive criticism.