2014 Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - Dell Big Crow Memorial Holiday Gift Project. Happy Holidays! We are excited to announce that the annual Dell Big Crow / Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Holiday Gift Project is underway! As you may know, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is one of the most impoverished and marginalized regions in America. While we seek to address the underlying causes of poverty on Pine Ridge, we also recognize the importance of building relationships between people on and off the reservation. We continue to work at Pine Ridge throughout the year with Service Learning projects, winter coat drives, providing families with firewood, home repairs, winterization, and other sustainable development projects. 2014 marks the 11th year of our Pine Ridge Holiday Gift Project! Last year, thanks to the kindness and generosity of friends, families, hundreds of amazing individual donors, our colleagues at Colorado State University, and members of the Fort Collins “Our Savior’s Lutheran Church,” the Holiday Project provided over 1,000 gifts for children and elders on the reservation! We also delivered almost 3,000 coats and countless pairs of work boots, snow boots, mittens, sleeping bags, and shoes to the reservation! Donors like you continue to forward the original project email on to colleagues, families, and friends! Thus, we received responses from all over the U.S. as well as Germany, Australia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, France, Japan, Belgium, New Zealand, the UK, and Canada! We have also had amazing support from other Native American Tribal Nations who have supported and helped with the Pine Ridge Project. We are growing!! Once again we are working with several reservation school teachers, counselors, community organizers, social workers, and homeless youth shelters in order to identify children and elders with the greatest needs. We are also began working with a new group of teachers who have classes for students with disabilities…. let us know if you would especially like to help with one of these children this year…. most of them are in desperate need of new, larger sized coats, shoes, underwear, and socks. How “Direct Giving” Works! 1. We receive wish/need lists from people on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. 2. “Santas,” that would be all of you, contact Julie or Christine directly via email. 3. In return we will email you the name, age, wish list, and mailing address for a child or elder. 4. You purchase a gift, gift-wrap it, and mail it directly to the child or elder’s home or school. 5. We would like to gently stress the importance of our children receiving gifts of approximately the same value. In these difficult economic times our lists are growing every year, so if you wish to contribute a larger gift please consider “adopting” another child or elder so we can provide items for more individuals. 6. Notably, we always have a few individuals and families with particularly difficult circumstances who need more costly items such as electric blankets, space heaters, XXL coats and shoes, fire wood, tools, etc. If you wish to provide a more expensive gift let us know and we’ll set you up to help them specifically. 7. Last year we also expanded the project to provide more FIRE WOOD for families on the reservation. Many people depend on wood burning stoves for all their heating during the freezing winter weather. We have partnered with a couple of Lakota gentlemen who cut, deliver and stack fire wood for needy families for the cost of $100 per cord. We are excited about this program as it provided jobs and income for the Lakota woodcutters while providing heat for family homes. 8. Please support our project by passing this letter on to your friends, families, and colleagues…. over the years this is how the project continues to grow! If you wish to provide a gift, please email Julie or Christine and we’ll send you the information you need to spread a little holiday cheer to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Julie Ann Sullivan [email protected] OR Christine Bartholomew forpineridge@gmail Also, please feel free to call Julie if you’d like to chat or have questions, we love to talk about the project and it’s fun for us to meet our “Santas!” I teach at CSU so best times to call me this semester are Tuesdays and Thursdays or any evening – and I’m up late! 970-231-2037. Check us out and post your thoughts on our Facebook page! Pine Ridge Indian Reservation – Dell Big Crow Holiday Gift Project https://facebook/pages/Pine-Ridge-Holiday-Project/139579879425346 Julie Ann Tams Sullivan, M.A. Senior Special NTT Faculty, Ethnic Studies Department Principal Investigator / Academic Director - Iraqi Young Leaders Exchange Program Program Director-Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Coat Drive & Holiday Gift Project Colorado State University Office-255 Aylesworth Hall SE Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1790 Email - [email protected] Voice - (970) 231.2037 ethnicstudies.colostate.edu/
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 07:27:35 +0000
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