Shortly after the January 12th earthquake in Haiti, team BUILD did some serious research on emergency shelter and all signs pointed to ShelterBox as an excellent organization to put our resources towards. Their motto is “an international disaster relief charity that delivers emergency shelter, warmth and dignity to people affected by disaster worldwide”. Those are words that we could get behind and we’ve been huge fans ever since. Earlier this summer we sponsored a buddy of ours to visit Haiti for assessing structural damage; after being in the field and experiencing the disaster on the ground in Léogâne, he reported back that ShelterBox was indeed the real deal and was making a significant difference to people struggling with survival.
There are a couple of exciting events involving ShelterBox just around the corner right here in the Northwest. First off, our friends at Picnic on Phinney Ridge will be hosting a Shelterbox benefit on Thursday July 29th from 5.30pm to 7.30pm where all fees will be donated to Shelterbox. Taste some delicious Spanish wines, have some nibbles AND help give shelter, warmth and dignity to people that need it. Team BUILD will definitely be there and we’re fortunate enough to be getting an actual ShelterBox kit which will be present at the event for everyone to check out. We’d love to see you there.
Secondly, we’re proud to announce that we recently organized a cycling ride from Seattle to Vancouver as a fundraiser for ShelterBox and a means to get people focused on an important world organization (some good old fashioned exercise isn’t a bad motivator either). We’ve been honored with a healthy list of donors who are helping us reach our goal of $10,000 (as of this posting, we have only six hundred smackaroos to go – thanks to everyone who has generously given so far!). We took the opportunity to design up some bike jerseys for the event, which was a ton of fun.
Which leads us to event number three; make a $50 donation to ShelterBox before this Monday, July 26th (5pm PST) and we’ll put your name in a hat – one lucky donor will win two club seats for the Seattle Sounders Futball Club vs. the Houston Dynamo on August 8th at Qwest field in Seattle ($100 value- give $50 to win $100 worth of tickets? Has the BUILDblog become a late night infomercial?- No!). You can donate here; make sure and mention the BUILDblog when you donate to ShelterBox and let us know in the comments at the bottom of this post that you’ve made the donation to be entered into our drawing. Again, we’ve raised $9,385 as of the moment of this post and are asking for YOUR help to hit our $10,000 goal.
With wine, food, futball, and cycling there should be a reason for everyone to get involved. We decided to give our full support to ShelterBox and we’re doing everything we can to keep at it. We’d be honored for any of you out there to participate. It’s invigorating to put a few bucks into something this powerful and we hope you can join us.
Cheers from team BUILD and thank you for everything you do.