Humanitarian Group

I am posting this on my blog so that those of you here in Utah that I don't have email addresses for, but you look at my blog, will be aware of this new group I'm starting. For those of you out of state you're more than welcome to come too, but it may get a little pricey flying or driving here each month. You'll just have to come and join us if you're in town sometime.

The last few months I have wanted to do something in the humanitarian service area, more than just donating some money to the fund at church on Sunday. Since it is not my season of life to travel to another country and help person to person, I thought I would start small and have a group each month where we women can get together and serve. All the more fun if you have friends to do service along with! I am thinking that I will start by trying the 3^rd Tuesday each month. (This may have to be flexible based on all of you and Shay is not home on Tuesday evenings to help with Nicholas and Emilie. We may need to work something out that the kids can come and play or watch a movie.) So this month, January, it will be on the 15^th at 6:00 p.m. For this month I haven’t quite decided what we’ll do, but I’m leaning towards making some of the bags for the school kits (I emailed the humanitarian center and they said they are in need of these kits at this time). I thought it would also be fun to start collecting items for hygiene kits and school kits and maybe in six months or more we’ll actually assemble them. The guidelines for what goes in these kits are:

School Kit
• 4 pencils (unsharpened)
• 1 box pre-sharpened or unsharpened assorted colored pencils (approx. 7” long, approx. 12 pencils/box)
• 1 pencil sharpener
• 1 rubber pencil eraser (approx 1" x 2")• 1 straight edge ruler - 12 inches, with metric • 1 pair of blunt-nosed scissors (metal blades)
• Glued or spiral bound notebooks or letter size legal pads, with lined sheets. Include enough notebooks/pads to total approximately 450 sheets (Please do not include more than 6 notebooks/pads). Sheet sizes 8 1/2" x 11", 8" x 10 1/2", 8 1/2" x 11 3/4" are acceptable.
• 1 durable cloth bag made of heavy fabric, (See cloth bag guidelines below)

Place items inside the cloth bag.

Hygiene Kit
• 2 unbreakable combs (no sharp handles)
• 4 toothbrushes (packaged)
• 1 tube of toothpaste (6-8 ounces, no pumps)
• 2 bars of soap (approximately 3.5-5 ounces)
• 2 hand towels (see hand towel guidelines below)

Hand Towels (for Hygiene Kit)
Use new 15-inch by 25-inch hand towels. Please do not use dish towels or washcloths.

So if you are able to, start collecting a few items each month and bring them when you come. I don’t want this to be a financial burden on anyone, so only do what you can and if you can’t, that’s fine, just come and join us to have some fun (some of the items we may be able to find at the dollar store, which I think is a wonderful place to find them.)

Along with getting together to do some service, I thought it would be fun to rotate each month having a couple of people bring an appetizer and maybe one person bring a dessert.

So I need some feedback. Are people interested in coming and joining me? Would the third Tuesday work for people? Please let me know what you all think and if you are interested in coming I can always send out an email each month to remind everyone, so if you want to be on that list, let me know.

Kim