Summer 2019
It’s nice to have a little reprieve from the sweltering days of this Summer. Today is my husband’s birthday and I’m taking full credit for ordering lovely weather for his day.
Last week was our first ever “Moon-vie” at Proctor’s Theater in downtown Schenectady, New York. We decided to invite everyone to a fun evening of air-conditioned entertainment as a simple fundraiser in the middle of what for most people is vacation time. It felt like a huge risk, but we jumped in and for almost six weeks we had nine people signed up to come to the event. I found myself waking in the middle of the night having dreamt of the GE Theater with eight people staring at me as I spoke about The MoonCatcher Project. I was one of the nine ticket holders.
We showed “PadMan”, the wonderful entertaining, heartfelt and profound story of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a caring inventive man from India who designs and builds a machine to make menstrual pads and thereby brings low cost menstrual supplies to his country. Produced in true Bollywood style, it was fun as well as thought provoking and everyone loved all two plus hours of it.
Happily, I ended up speaking to over 100 people in that theater who came out to support The MoonCatcher Project. It was a movie date for all of us and a great way to get out of the heat. Thank you everyone!
Over 100 local supporters attended “Moon-vie Night” at Proctor’s GE Theater on August 7.
A young supporter helps Ellie to choose winners of our raffle.
But speaking of fundraisers. The MoonCatcher Project Board spends a lot of time thinking about trying not to deluge people with ask after ask. I know that my inbox contains emails from non-profits nearly every day. The nonstop requests for money can get tiresome! The reality though is that in this day and age where large amounts of money aren’t being given to non-profits it’s our job to fundraise constantly. And it isn’t easy.
My feeling is that you should give when you can and let others give when they can. For everyone there are going to be fat and lean times and that’s understandable. Forgive us if our pleas are annoying you. In between all those asks are emails with information about what we are doing, stories from schools throughout the world, beautiful pictures and thought provoking ideas. We appreciate not only the financial support but the time you give us and the emotional support as well. When Oprah discovers us, we’ll slow down the asks. We promise
Thanks so much for being a part of our growing community. Watch for Fall MoonBees. There are a bunch coming up as well as some presentations and events. Thank you and enjoy the sunshine.