donna_m

ah yes. the future. Portland wasnt the end... we are continuing this until the end of the tour, rumored to be Hawaii in december this year. There are so many people that still dont know about One and Make poverty History and only need to be told, and then sign up on their own... you would think u2 fans would already know... but not all people at the concerts are diehard fans that frequent forums and fanclubs :) and yes, we branch out. Sammi is trying to get a group going in Seattle. the mayor last year named the city a One city, but there is no local group. Renee in Salt lake has a group going already, and they are organizing a music festival to draw attention to One. Tina and reggy in belgium are making noise, i'm getting a group together in vancouver, stopping people on buses and in shopping malls if i see them with a white band, giving them the url to our yahoo group if they seem interested. its not just noise now... its ideas we need - like bono's question on yahoo this week - where do we go from here? we are all trying to figure that out together. like i said, one thing to do for sure is sign up to one.org even if you arent american. when they send you updates, go sign letters and such when they ask. sign up to live8.com and do the same thing. and sign up to makepovertyhistory.ca and send letters to our prime minister... canada is getting a failing grade right now...britain is passing. keep pushing the policy makers to do what they promised. and find out if you have a local group. you might be able to volunteer at concerts handing out info packages. and there might be other events... canadian cities have a World Partnership Walk each year. you form a team and get people to sponsor you, and our government matches dollar for dollar that day. our team of 3 raised nearly $900 this year.

hi there, i just read tina's entire story too, and although i lived it, when its in print, i cant help but wonder how it all came to be, and to be amazed at what we all accomplished together. it almost seems like i'm looking at someone elses life :) tina wanted me to mention Toronto and the painting... long story short, after the success of Vancouver and other concerts, our local group of about 5 decided to go to another concert, but had to choose between Ottawa or Portland - both of which had G8 meetings around the concert dates... the objective was to raise enough stink here that our Prime Minister would listen to us and keep his promise on how much foreign aid to give... the other G8 countries like Britian and France all said yes to 0.07% aid, our leader said yes, then got elected and said 'not yet'. In meantime, we came up with an idea after watching Live8 concert... a fellow held up a ONE banner and the camera guy caught it and filmed it. just the body language of holding a small banner in your hands over your head was enough to make us want that... it was powerful. The idea came to us while eating at a restaurant, to try and buy up (or get for free) old stained cloth napkins that the restaurant couldnt use any more. It didnt work, so we bought cheap bedsheets at Ikea, cut them up, and painted them with regular black latex paint one saturday afternoon. we did up about 3000 of them, and eventually they were used in Toronto and had a huge impact. Funny thing is none of us painting, were at that concert... but we still felt pretty good doing them and then later seeing them in people's photos from the show. will have to go back and reread tina's posts to see what else she said i should mention :lol:

:) thanks heh.

the auction items were supplied by the fans...all photos taken of the band at various concerts. music rising was created by Edge and the people that run the grammy's. none of us could afford a $3000 guitar, so we convinced them to produce tshirts like the one Edge wore, and we all bought one. they had the tshirts ready for purchase in three days! 100% of monies for each shirt goes to the musicians fund. ICross is strictly canadian and very tiny, but some of us support it by knitting comfort dolls....small dolls that are used as packing foam for vials of Aids medicines. the meds are shipped to clinics in africa, and unpacked and the dolls are handed out to the local kids. its something that costs pennies to make, and is easy. if anyone is interested in knitting, i can post the pattern. world vision has been around for many years - at least 15 that i know of. if you only have 5 bucks to give, you can 'shop' and buy things like bed nets, plant seeds, vitamins to prevent blindness etc as a one time gift. WV is one of the better ones - l think its less than 5% of money collected goes to administration costs. RED is bono's new project. a way to move from aid to fair trade. GAP and others are joining. if you buy a GAP RED tshirt, 40% of the money goes to the global fund, as well as the shirts being made in africa, by africans, using african organic cotton, making a very fair wage. there are other products like motorola phone, american express card, shoes, sunglasses. etc. every little bit helps

ah! i am long winded - its my only fault :rolleyes: :laugh3: auction items... well, a lady we know that runs the African Well fund had an auction a few months back. She auctioned off about 30 photos of U2 in concert - all photos were snapped by fans during the shows. I think the lowest price photo went for nearly 75 dollars. We (as a fan club) raised $4000.oo in about 10 days with this auction. As far as i know, it was only the fan club that bid on the photos... and she had to clear it with the moderators to be able to sticky the post at the forum, but because the photos were taken by fans, she didnt need permission from U2's management to sell them. a friend of mine and i are developing a project which will be strictly items to auction as well - with proceeds to African Well fund, ICROSS, World Vision. The items we're going to auction include the RED Independent newspaper that Bono was editor of for a day, and a copy of Rolling Stone with Bono on the front cover. Again, we plan on posting the auction info and link at the forum and nowhere else. There are many things people can auction off -its just a matter of finding a market for it. IF you can get Coldplay items to auction, and IF you can get permission from the mods to post the info here, you'd be amazed at how many people will bid on it, especially if they know its for a charity that the band supports. AS well, there must be items that are available only in Europe that people in the USA want, and vice versa. As for other issues.. make sure that you keep talking about them here. Things like Product RED, Music Rising (new orleans musicians fund, etc) all have websites. RED has a blog and are looking for people to input ideas and to help build it from the ground up. We finally realized that even though most of the fans at the forum had heard about One and MPH and such, we still needed to talk about it - new fans show up all the time, many lurk for days before jumping in. AND people change their minds from reading people's posts and learning on their own. Also, make sure that all of you are signed up for updates from ONE - chances to send emails to the policy makers when needed. Sign up for MPH in CAnada and send emails to our new prime minister who has no intentions of keeping up with the foreign aid/fair trade promises of the previous leader. Sign up for LIVE8 and again get emails when to send letters to the G8 leaders. Because of the noise we made last year.. the G8 have Africa on the agenda for this years meetings as well... having the same issue two years in a row is highly unusual ive read. missionfish - yes i know of them, but only know that you have to be based in the USA to be able to use them through eBay. I"m in Canada, so it didnt work for us. As for promoting... we have only promoted the charity thing through the U2 forum, and some of us with our other on -line friends, coworkers who are sympathetic, and family (who all think we are crazy! lol) We've not promoted it outside of that. The thought did come up, but it seemed to be a massive undertaking with many pitfalls and disadvantages. What we did come up with, is that some of us donate to a registered charity in U2's name (like the African Well fund) so that they realize it all comes from the fanclub.

hi there, i'm new, and found the right spot to create a signature line, have done so, previewed it, and it supposedly works... but when i go back to look at my two posts, i see no signature line - although i 'did' get my avatar to work. any suggestions? thanks. *edit...lol now it shows up! and now of course i cant figure out how to delete a comment. thanks anyways.

HEllo Tina, found you! thanks for directing me over here... i think i'm going to like being here too. I'm shy, so dont want to start my own hello thread yet, so i'm going to steal yours :kiss: I'm donna, i live near Vancouver Canada, and i was lucky enough to become involved with this lovely belgian fruitcake, and had a very rewarding year last year - which ended with both of us meeting in person for the first time in Portland in december. I"m going to lurk for a bit, add to the odd post here and there, and get a feel for the place, but will check back in this thread often