It’s time again to get back to writing and keeping you updated on what has been going on but before we get to the personal stuff we’d like to share an update on our fundraising efforts to buy books for the children of Fiji.
Our Books For The Children of Fiji GoFundMe campaign has raised $1525 online and while we were home in the states visiting family and friends two of our nearest and dearest friends made a substantial donation which brought us up to $3060 USD! We are now just $440 short of our $3500 goal! This is absolutely astounding. The kindness and generosity of everyone is truly humbling.
And this isn’t the only excellent news we have to report on this front. Dave, a friend we know who works at All Marine here in Whangerie along with Irene with Zonta International have procured eight boxes of books from Kokopu Elementary School. These are library books that have already been vetted and are ready to go to the deserving kids of Fiji. Many thanks to Dave and Irene as well as to the Kokopu Elementary School administration.
But wait….it gets even better than all that! Prior to Christmas we reached out to the Lion’s Club of New Zealand. Just after the first of the year we received information from their office stating they do have books and would be interested in joining the cause. It’s absolutely amazing how many people are stepping up to help. We are completely humbled by it all.
Our next step is to begin recruiting other cruisers to assist us in getting the books to Fiji and distributing them to villages and schools once they are there. To this end we will be attending some cruiser events here in Whangerie to meet with and talk to others who are interested in helping. We will also be looking into the possibility of shipping some of the books to a couple of marinas where we can pick them up and distribute them once we’ve emptied our boat of the boxes we are carrying with us to Fiji.
There’s a lot of logistics required to make this happen but we’re super excited to get things moving. This is keeping Jilly really busy while Dan continues to work on getting the bottom of Dazzler painted as well as other routine maintenance that needs to be done while she’s out of the water. Of course we’ll be keeping you updated on our campaign along the way.
As for us, we spent five weeks back in the states visiting family and friends and traveling from coast to coast. Check back in a few days to hear about our journey.
Until next time…
Jilly & Dan
P.S. We are still a little short of our $3500 goal so if you’ve got even a few dollars you can spare we’d love it if jump book cruise and help us to provide as many books and maps as we can to the children of Fiji. You can click on the photo below to link directly to our GoFundMe page.
