Nikita Desai

According to Charlotte Bronte in Shirley, sage persons, such as Mrs. Pryor, speak little and when they do speak, their words may be important. I will use that as an excuse for why I haven’t blogged in so long. Paltry, I know, but at least I tried!

So, I know I haven’t actually blogged in the longest time, and it is not because we have not been fund-raising, so much as my having the craziest schedule, what with university applications, deciding my future and all of that. I know, I know, excuses. As I am now on March Break, however, I had no valid excuse that would appease my conscience, and so here I am.

Look at me! I barely started writing and I’ve bored you half to death. So, let’s get to business. First, we did have two bake sales since the Cookies for Change one, and raised about $185 from them. In total, we have about $250 to add to the funds we already sent over to Kenya. Unfortunately, because of a flurry of other fund raising activities around the school, Recalled to Life (the group that’s doing the fund raising) wasn’t able to carry out some of our bigger events. Never fear! As spring is about to start (soon, please God) we have a whole new retinue of events planned to fund raise for Morokoshi. I am not currently at liberty to reveal what these events are, for the sake of mystery. Oh, and also because they are not fully planned and set in place yet.

All the same, I have VERY exciting news… the first school room has been built!! (I say first, for I very much hope for more.) The construction is over, and the adorable little elfs are enjoying their new abode most thoroughly. Or at least that is my hope. Have I ever mentioned how utterly irresistible those children are? I am so in love with them, and I have never met them yet! I can’t imagine the day I actually get to meet them. They’ll have to use a tow truck to drag me away. Until that happy day, however, the pictures will have to be enough to keep me going. And just to demonstrate how amazing these kids are, I have attached pictures of them and the newly built school room. I, for one, have no hesitations in admitting that when I feel a little unmotivated, I look at all the pictures that were sent to me before, and feel so much better.

Oh, and one last thing. I wanted to congratulate PCA and my supportive and hard working Recalled to Life group on their fund raising so far. I also wanted to thank everyone who contributed to the bake sales with food and money. Eventually I’ll compile a list of all these people and thank them thoroughly. I also wanted to thank Cameron Dunkin so very much for all his help, guidance, and encouragement and say his beautiful posters are sorely missed. Although he’s not in Toronto now, his guidance and advice is still invaluable. Actually, I would also like to comment that half of the work that went into finishing this project was done by him. So all of you who read this, congratulate him! (sorry) Finally, I wanted to congratulate everyone who set up and built the schoolroom, including Amos and Stephen, because in my opinion, it is truly beautiful. I hope to someday visit it. On my eventually having to leave it, I will not comment.

Now that I have thoroughly rambled and been unable to get my wandering blogging into a cohesive whole, I withdraw defeated, in hopes that content with be of more value then coherence.

Take care, dress warm,

Nikita

Early Seasons Greetings Everyone!

I was going to go with baking for bucks for my title, but somehow the present title seems more catchy. It’s clear that I enjoy corny alliteration.

So, as I mentioned in my previous blog (see below) we had planned on having our first Morokoshi fundraising bake sale on October 31st, 2008, which we reasoned was a perfect day, not only because of halloween, but also because, it being a Friday, people would be in a more generous mood. As it turned out, we reasoned right (if that makes sense)

We managed to sell pretty much all the food we had baked, and actually ran out of food in about half an hour on the Elementary side of the school. I was somewhat astonished at how much baked goods the kids could consume.. it was quite impressive.

Now, I know I’ve been leaving you readers in some suspense, which, trust me was intentional. Hopefully you’ll be quite curious by now to know just how much we managed to raise. So this time i’ll just say it… we raised $205! Which brings our overall total to approximately $800 in just two months! And if things go as planned, I may actually have some more good news on our fundraising. You’ll just have to check back to know what it is

Anyways,  as it is now, I’m doing my best to obtain all the pictures we took during the bake sale, which is one of the reasons I was so long in writing, since I had hoped to include pictures with the blog. Unfortunately, as it turns out I could stall no longer, and will simply have to put up the pictures later. If the camera finally decides to co-operate

As it is, this blog is beginning to run on the long side, a situation I tend to avoid due to my own inability to focus. So, in the words of that little penguin from Happy Feet,

adios amigos!

Nikita

So as I promised before, I have decisively finished adding up the numbers, redeeming all the money coupons, and adding up the totals of what we’ve raised from the penny drive, and I can formally announce it… by this time you should be getting at least a little excited. I know I am.

So, the official total of what we’ve made over the last four weeks of the penny drive is…

*drumroll*

Six hundred and five dollars and fifteen cents!

The reason I wrote it out like that is because it looks so much more dramatic then just writing out the numbers. This way you’ll actually have to think about the amount. Or at least I’m hoping it works that way…

In other news, we’re planning on ending the penny drive on November 15th, but no fear, we still have many other fundraising projects. And one of them is coming up VERY soon, and that is our Harvest/Fall themed bake sale! It’s on the 31st of October, at Peoples Church, and is going to be one of our smaller bake sales. I’m planning on going really big for the other ones, since it turns out many stores are willing to donate food to charitable bake sales.

I think that’s about all the most recent news… I’ll do my best to keep you updated.

Chau for now,

Nikita

Hello World! This is officially my first post on this blog, and I honestly have no idea what to write. So I’m just going to write a bit about myself… those of you who already know me have permission to skip over this part, I won’t be offended . It may be as dry as toast.

My name is Nikita Desai, I am seventeen years old, and I live in Toronto Canada. I am of Indian origin, but was actually born in Kenya, and lived there all of my life until I was thirteen. It was at that age that I moved to Canada, where I have lived ever since. Currently I am in grade 12 at Peoples Christian Academy, where I lead a little project called Recalled To Life, which is a community involvement project with a humanitarian focus. I do not actually know the origin of this name, as I wasn’t really the one who came up with it. However, it does remind me vaguely of the first chapter of A Tale of Two Cities… you know the one called “Recalled to Life”?

Anyways, to avoid getting off topic, I’m going to be using this blog to talk about what Recalled to Life is doing to raise funds for one of SPAN’s projects, the Morokoshi Nursery in Kenya. I heard about the nursery through someone who was working with the nursery a few months ago, and I was really interested in what I heard about it. So when the school year began, and Recalled to Life was trying to decide where to donate the money we were going to raise this year, I decided Morokoshi would be a great place to give the money to.

So now we’re well into our first fundraising venture… a loose change drive that is actually raising alot more money then I expected. I won’t say the exact amount we’ve raised so far, as I want that to be a surprise… because I’m doing another collection this Wednesday. I want the final amount to be a nice big number . However, I will mention the fact we raised approximately $114 in the first week, and are now in our fourth week of fundraising. You do the math.

I guess this post is getting pretty long… what with it being my first post and all. I promise I will work on getting something more interesting to say, something that’s not a history lesson, although I’m sure my personal history can be terribly absorbing .

Take care!

Nikita