Hello everyone, and welcome to the end of election season (thankfully!) and the beginning of the holiday season. I hope that you are all healthy and happy and looking forward to time spent with friends and family.

Here at ONE, we are looking at the coming year and thinking about the needs of all of our lovely girls. If all our girls continue to the next year (and I have no reason to believe they won’t), we will need approximately $10,000 to cover their expenses. We will be writing grants to make sure that our girls have the funding they need for years to come. But individual donors are also an important part of our organization, and so I am writing to ask that you consider a year-end donation to the organization to help us with next year’s expenses. We are currently helping 16 girls, two of whom already have Benefactors for their entire education! Our friend Sherry in Tucson recently pledged to provide Wini in Tanzania with her educational costs as long as she is in school, which is a huge help. Thank you, Sherry!

We will probably not take any more applications until we can be assured of grants or funding that will total at least $10,000 every year. It’s not too much money, but the worst thing I can think of would be to tell a girl she’ll have help with her education, and then not be able to continue that help.

You can make a donation in one of several ways. We can accept checks made out to the One World Foundation, or you can pay on the website through PayPal. PayPal does take a fee out of every donation, but it’s a small one, and if you are most comfortable with that method, we are happy with that as well.

I wanted to let you know about one other opportunity also. We have a project up on a site called ConnectHer (www.connecther.org). They are currently having a “competition” of sorts, where the first organization to get 25 donations of $25 (or more) will also receive a $500 matching grant from ConnectHer (by December 5, 2012). So that’s another way you can donate as well. You can check out our project page at: https://www.connecther.org/projects/view/?id=40.

Please pass this along to your friends, and feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Remember, your donations are tax deductible (the donations made through ConnectHer are tax deductible through that organization).

Thank you so much for your support! At some point soon, we’ll be sending out information on the final report cards for several of our students. In late December, I will be going to Nicaragua and Honduras to visit our students there, and I’ll come back with lots of pictures and stories to share.

Christa Sadler