Perhaps you have recently found yourself wandering the pages on the OSSO website, or listening again to the stories of an OSSO volunteer who just returned from Ecuador or Thailand, and a desire to help has touched something inside you.
But what if I can’t go to Ecuador or Thailand right now?
We hear you! Maybe you’re in the middle of a school semester right now, your financial situation may make international travel difficult at the moment, or other life circumstances impede you from packing your bags today.
You can still help!
OSSO is always in need of enthusiastic people who are willing to help right from their home base! Fundraising is one the most impactful ways you can directly assist our sweet children. It takes a lot of money to keep an orphanage running! There’s a never-ending list of food, diapers, medicine, doctor’s appointments, and even surgeries that need to be paid for.
When I returned home from Ecuador, I was a pretty miserable wreck because I felt like I couldn’t do anything to help our beloved children. Luckily for me, I was wrong!
My old high school, Sky View High School, was amazing enough to host an entire WEEK of fundraising for the special-needs OSSO orphanage in Ecuador, and asked me to help. Every year, Sky View has a “Cause Week,” in which the Executive Student Council hosts fundraising activities for the entire week for a particular cause. The turnout that year was amazing! The entire student body and community came together for one week and was able to raise several thousand dollars. WOW!
(Here I am with the Sky View Executive Council during Cause Week! I was able to speak about some of my experiences volunteering in Ecuador during their kick-off assembly.)
Here are some of the following activities that were used during Cause Week. These can be applicable to any type of fundraising event, whether it’s a high school fundraiser, an event for October For Orphans, or something else entirely! I hope these ideas will get your brain working!
-Chalk Festival (This was by far the most anticipated and effective fundraising activity! They sold bags of colored chalk for $2-3 and then had a giant festival with music!)
-Drive-Inn Movie hosted in the school parking lot (charge per car)
-Jar Wars (Each grade had a jar in the middle of the school commons. Coins counted as points, while dollar bills subtracted points. The grade with the most amount of points won a prize at the end of the week. It was an intense competition between grades that included sabotage with cold, hard cash!)
-Color Run 5K (Sold shirts and chalk, great alternative to the Chalk Festival)
-Game Assembly (i.e. first person to run up with $5 could pie a teacher in the face)
-Panhandling (Musical students signed up to panhandle during lunch hour and serenaded through the halls)
-Carnival Night (Club officers hosted games and the community was invited. Great for families with kids!)
-Pizza Night (Local pizzeria donated a percentage of their earnings for the night to Cause Week and everyone was invited!)
-Pancake Lunch (Executive Student Council made and sold pancakes during lunch)
-Giant Garage Sale (Held on Saturday morning in the parking lot. This was the event that surprised everyone by being one of the most successful! Advertise to the community well in advance!)
-Choir Show (The school’s concert choir had a performance that week and donated part of the ticket sales)
-T-Shirts (The Executive Student Council designed some beautiful shirts for the week to sell, see below photo)
Now that your mind is running, don’t let anything hold back your desire to help! We appreciate everything that hard-working, passionate individuals like you do to help create a peaceful, loving, and sustaining environment for all of our children!
(This is me getting a little weepy in Ecuador prepping Christmas presents. We were able to give the kids a spectacular Christmas thanks to many donations from people back home! A lot of tears of gratitude were shed by us volunteers on Christmas Day! THANK YOU!)