Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Art Safari Tickets- Buy Online
Reserve Your Spot on the Art Safari, Saturday April 21! Buy your tickets here!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Love Made Tangible - March Update Newsletter
|
VIEW IN YOUR BROWSER
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
| ||||||||||
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Art Safari-Get Your Zebra On!
Saturday, April 21, 2012
A Wild & Crafty Creative Retreat (11am-4:30pm)
Animals for Africa at Safari West in Santa Rosa, CA
www.animalsforafrica.org info@animalsforafrica.org
• 510.220.8894
Feeling wild and crafty? Join Animals
for Africa on an Art Safari! Come connect and create on a day-long creative retreat
with new friends, great food & crafting-for-a-cause!
The morning begins with an inspiring journey through the “Sonoma Serengeti,” California’s own authentic African Wildlife preserve, with over 100 species of mammals and birds! We’ll share a delicious BBQ banquet of grilled chicken or pulled pork and seasonal veggies then hang out and relax all afternoon, creating our own Animals for Africa!
Animals for Africa are simple, folk-art inspired stuffed animals, hand-stitched by concerned citizens of the world for orphaned and vulnerable children victimized by poverty, globalization and HIV/AIDS in Africa.
Your contribution of $150 includes safari, lunch and crafting
supplies, and helps support Animals for Africa in its mission to benefit & empower
Africa’s most vulnerable women and children through creativity and love. You’ll
also receive your own Animal for Africa to keep, hand-made in Malawi by an
apprenticing artisan. Reserve your
spot today!
Space is limited to 8 adventurers!
($10 Early
Bird Discount if you register by March 20!)
REGISTER HERE: info@animalsforafrica.org
MAIL CHECKS TO:
Animals for Africa
1119 East 15th Street
Oakland, CA 94606
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Upcoming Travels & New Alliances
Upcoming Travels
and New Alliances
Travel plans are underways for our return trip to Africa this summer to deliver 200 Animals for Africa to the children at the community based child care centers in Tukumbo Village and the Manja Care Orphanage in Blantyre, Malawi. 
Our menagerie of hand-crafted animals keeps growing, and thanks to our ambassadors and friends, we already have nearly 80 animals in the stable, almost half way to our goal! That's a lot of "love made tangible" ! I can barely wait to see the smiles it will bring, each time I put a cuddly, one-of-kind animal creation into the hands of the child it was made for! While we're in Malawi, we'll be checking in with the women of Tukombo Village to see how things are shaping up with their animal crafting cooperative (or Animal C.O.O.P), and to offer additional training and supplies. We've also been invited by the director of In Movement: Art for Social Change to Uganda and the founder of Cross Cultural Collaborative to Ghana, with a lot of potential brewing to create Animals for Africa for the children there and seed Animal COOPs in those communities! We'll keep you posted on how these new alliances and travel plans shape up! In the meantime, let us know if you have even an inkling of joining us in Malawi, Ghana or Uganda!
Girls Get Wild at CERI Animal Art Party
The Center for the Empowerment of Refugees and Immigrants (CERI) in Oakland, CA hosted Animals for Africa at their own Animal Art Party in January. I was delighted to spend two Friday evenings chatting and crafting with this group of compassionate and wildly creative young women, while they made their own ecclectic versions of the animals for orphans in Africa. They also fed me delicious, home cooked cambodian food (a group cooking effort) and told me more than a few good ghost stories! The children of traumatized immigrants from a war torn Cambodia themselves, these girls were quick to identify with the blight of the African child they were crafting for, and wondered with their own big hearts, if we might also make animals for the children at the CERI sponsored orphanage in Cambodia. A seed was certainly planted! We'll keep you posted on how this new alliance grows, but a future "Love Made Tangible" campaign in Asia is an inspiring possibility! Much thanks to CERI executive director Mona Afary and program coordinator Jen Jastrab for the invitation and hospitality!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
February Update
I am so excited with all the creatively that continues to flourish long after our journey to Malawi in May 2011. I wanted to share more of what is unfolding with Animals for Africa! Sue Hickman and I had a very fruitful meeting with Safari West on Monday, with the possibility to host ongoing Animal Art Parties for their overnight guests there as one potential out come. They may also be open to displaying the animals and promotional materials for the project in their gift shop and dining area- just awaiting approval by their board! Also, plans are definitely in the works for an Animals for Africa Art Safari day retreat and a weekend Art Safari Overnight Retreat soon, so stay tuned!
Meanwhile, lots of organizing and networking is underway, which has been very valuable in helping me to refine the vision of Animals for Africa and consider where it may go/grow, while still tending to it's newly budding sprouts in Malawi. As I may have already told you, it was very exciting to receive 38 animals from the women of Tukombo through Masanko, and to send payment for the "product" directly back to the village along with some additional supplies. The women are in essence, in business!
Other exciting news, as of today, I have officially sent out all the children's names we gathered in Tukombo village and Mjoho BDCC- 83 names in all. I have not received back 83 animals yet, of course, but I trust they will all "migrate" back to me (wink to Sue Hickman, for that pun) before I return to Malawi this summer. Thanks to Mary and Sue, I also have 61 names of children from the Genesis Foundation orphanage, Manja Othandiza in Blantyre, and have sent out kits with 7 of those names already! So it won't be long before there's an animal for every child on the lists gathered last Spring! I am sure there will be more children than I have names for by the time I return to Malawi, so I will also be asking Ambassadors to host "orphan animal" parties- creating animals without names who will be "adopted" by children who are new (or were missed) in the initial name gathering process. I am sure I will be very busy in the evenings in Africa, adding these children's names to their animals (hint hint those who are thinking of traveling this summer!)
This is where the program stands today, with lots of tendrils reaching into potentially fertile ground for collaborations (if you "like" my animals for Africa facebook page, you can see more- and a newsletter is due out soon!)
Most immediately, I realize I will need support upon returning to Malawi specifically for the AFA project in Tukombo, and I hope to work with the orphanage in Blantyre to seed a similar crafting cooperative. I am venturing into new territory!
So, for now, that is the latest! Exciting potential brewing all over!
With hippo hugs,
Robbyn
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Animal Art Party Antics
A big shout out to Sue Hickman's Soropotomist Club of Diablo Vista, for offering to sponsor their "S" Club girls at Carodelet High School to make Animals for Africa. Despite this generous funding, these resourceful young women wanted to make their own contributions, so they threw a pizza party fundraiser to raise donations for Animals for Africa!
And Sue's not the only ambassador who's been herding the animals in! After Lauran Krinard Weinmann hosted the first "offical" party in Oakland, CA i October, she signed up to hold another one as her "moms group's" annual charity project in December.
In January, Lisa Wood stepped up to test-pilot the kit as the first ambassador to wing it from instructions only - with great success!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)