New fundraising ideas and other news

Some good news to start things off – we have finally set up a PayPal account and now have this option for donating money and paying sponsorship through our website. You can currently pay through the Dream Catchers section but we are also re-jigging a few of the pages on the site to incorporate the option on other pages and will post an update here when that is complete. The PayPal setup also relates to a couple of other ideas we have been working on…

As more of our projects take off, we need to raise more funds so we are looking at some creative fundraising ideas:

Gratitude Elephants

Many of our friends have recently received a small gift in the mail - a Gratitude Elephant. These are small elephants hand-made by women’s co-operatives in remote areas of Nepal. We are working on sourcing a regular supply of them from Nepal and plan to sell them as a gift option from our website. We enclosed a small message when we sent them to friends that reminded them to be grateful for everything they have in the world and to always think of those less fortunate. We were amazed at the enthusiastic response we received and some have even decided to take up the gesture with their own network of friends which is very exciting. It all comes back to the idea that the smallest acts of kindness can make a big difference. As the result of enthusiastic requests, we have decided to make these Gratitude Elephants available on the website. Stay tuned for news of when this part of the website is up and running and get ready to place your orders! Of course 100% of the profit from the sale of the elephants will go towards the work of the Foundation and you will be helping Nepali women as well as getting a great gift to give friends.

Mitrataa Incense

Once we have the website shop up and running we will be offering Mitrataa incense for sale. The incense comes in a compact box and includes a Mitrataa ceramic tile to hold the burning incense, and four different fragrances of incense to burn. We will be able to take larger orders for the incense if people want to on-sell them in their shops, cafes etc too. As with the elephants, 100% of the profit from the sale of the incense will go towards the work of the Foundation.

So, lots of new reasons to come back to our website http://www.mitrataa.org! As we start to expand the range of things on offer it may also be a great time to forward this blog posting or our info on to anyone you think may be interested in Mitrataa and the work we do.

We are off to Nepal in October for 2 weeks to run a teacher training course, an IP training course and an exciting new training course for women journalists in Kathmandu with a wonderful guest presenter. Watch this space for more information to follow shortly.

Take care and have fun always!