Will You Help Us Win the Race to 20K?

[The Lady V]

There’s a race going on and I want YOU to be a part of it. Here’s why:
In a small village in Kenya, there is a little girl named Riziki. She and her two older sisters were forced to live on the street after their mother died, surviving on whatever scraps they could recover from piles of garbage. After six months, the local police picked them up and put them in prison. Because, well, there’s nowhere else to put street children. Riziki was only one year old.

Thanks to an organization called One Home Many Hopes, however, Riziki and her sisters were released from prison and were welcomed into a new family. A family of 32 sisters, all of whom were also rescued from the streets. Today, Riziki is a healthy three-year-old little girl who is thriving in her new home, along with four cows, a few hens, a vegetable patch, a donkey called George.

One Home Many Hopes was founded by my very good friend Thomas Keown, a Boston newspaper columnist, who visited Kenya and was shocked by the sight of street children foraging for food in the streets, just like Riziki and her sisters did not too long ago. When One Home Many Hopes was selected as one of two nonprofits in the country to be featured in a documentary on nonprofit fundraising, Thomas asked me to join the campaign team – for something we’re calling the Race to 20K.

Our challenge: To raise $20K in 30 days!

Why are we doing this? We want to build a new home and school for the girls. At Mudzini Kwetu (as One Home Many Hopes is known in Kenya), the provisions are adequate but could be improved. Our dream is to build a home to better accommodate the girls, put them through college, and create an on-site school free of the prohibitive private school fees common in Kenya.

How will we do it? By getting 1,000 people to donate just $20.

Of course, the trick is finding those 1,000 people. But when Thomas told me about the campaign, I was immediately convinced that we could use social media – blogging, twittering, digging, facebooking, all of it – to do it! And, folks, it’s starting to work. Within two days after the campaign launch, Shelley (who I’ve never met in person!) connected me to Gradon, who blogged about our campaign, which reached Warren and Danny, who also blogged about it … and I couldn’t even tell you how many people have been reached already.

We’re down to 24 days! How can you help?

* Visit the Race to 20K and make a donation of $20 or an amount of your choosing.
* Tweet it, re-tweet it and liberally use the hashtag #ohmh
* Come follow me (@theladyv) on Twitter for updates!
* Digg it
* Stumble it
* Join our Facebook page
* Show it on your status
* Add the badge to your blog or use it as an avatar