Happy New Year guys!!! January went by so quickly for me. I was stuck in the US for Christmas due to multiple cancellations caused by bad weather. I was happy to spend Christmas with my parents and siblings but since my sons were in Nigeria because I had planned to be back in Nigeria to spend Christmas with them, I couldn’t be completely happy. Thanks to the internet and Skype we were able to have the boys celebrate with us during the traditional Christmas morning gift opening. They at least got to see their Christmas gifts and be a little excited…
The real excitement came when I got home and they were able to actually get their gifts. Uche kept raving at how he was the luckiest kid on earth to get a Wii at 7 when he wasn’t expecting to get it until he was 10! I was especially glad that there were no mishaps with my luggage this time. I got back to Nigeria just before New Year and spent the first few days of the year making it up to the boys. By the time I realized my birthday was around the corner it was too late to plan a party that would take place on my Birthday so I started planning my birthday party to happen on January 22nd, which is one week after my birthday. Everyone knows I take the opportunity accorded by my birthday to have a party every year, I told myself that being in Nigeria will not stop that tradition. In fact since Nigerians love to party, I planned a bigger party than I had thrown in years.
This year I wanted to take to merge two things that I love to do, partying and giving back the society so I tagged my birthday party Judith’s 1st Annual Birthday Charity Dinner. This was an idea I had for a while but haven’t had the guts to actualize. I was quite worried since I always believed that giving back and charity was more of an American thing than a Nigerian thing, but I told myself that the worst that can happen is that I raise no money, which is exactly what I would raise if I did not try. I started inviting the few friends I had made since I got here. I talked to some friends before hand about the charity aspect of my Birthday party and I was amazed at the support I got even for the party itself. One awesome friend, paid for the DJ and donated $500 towards drinks, another provided a dozen bottles of Moet to make the event even classier! Someone donated cartons of Chicken and turkey and a total stranger agreed to cut it up in his meat shop for free! To say that I was shocked was an understatement! With all these and my fantastic cooking {wink}, needless to say we had an awesome party!!!
I cannot do the fun we had at this party justice without giving a BIG shout out to everyone who made it to party and especially those who traveled to Warri; a not so exotic destination to show their love and support and have a good old time! Thanks guys and gals!
On the fundraising proper, I introduced my charity project with a speech, which was well received. In a nutshell I have a dream of helping HIGH ABILITY students from under privileged families afford high quality education so that they can break the cycle of poverty. In my speech I asked for donations in form of time, skills, and money to register and run a non profit organization which will initially give scholarship to such students to enable them afford better quality schools and ultimately build non profit schools which will offer free education to such students. At the party I also introduced a silent auction where a few items were auctioned and the profit was donated to the charity fund. I was also surprised at the response got on this idea since it was something new to my entire crowd. All in all the fundraising effort raised N146, 800 to kick start the charity with another N100, 000 pledged.
This is enough money to register and kick start the charity organization but I am still struggling to get the donation of time and skills which is critical to the success of any non profit organization so please take time to read some of the attachments on this post and if you think education-empowers is a project you are interested in, contact me @ Judith.udeke@education-empowers.org .
Thanks for reading my blog and Have a very awesome day!