What We Can Achieve in Ten Days

I keep writing and rewriting this post. It is now 11:55pm and I have been working on it since 8:00pm. There are stories of Tanzania I want to relate, there are ideas I want to impart, but trying to cram it all into a blog post just isn't working. Instead I will sum it up with a personal story and a statistic

• While having a discussion with some men in Tanzania, it came about that they believed they were safe from contracting AIDS because they never sleep with a woman when she is bleeding. It is always the woman who carries the disease because women, I was told, were unclean. That was how God had made it.
• According to a UNICEF report, 79% of Guinean girls between the ages of 15-19 believe it is okay for a husband to hit or beat his wife under certain circumstances.

Beyond just learning to read and write, education helps slow down the spread of infectious disease and teaches girls that it is never okay for a husband to beat you. Eduction is key to breaking the cycle of poverty.

Today is the launch of Matoto's Ten Day Event and I would like to invite you to join us. We have built a school in Kubian, Guinea and now we need to fill it with desks, chalk boards, teachers and students. Ten Days is a deceptively simple idea. We have teams of 10 and each member has 10 days to find 10 people to donate $10. The goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the event.

There has been a lot of smack talk between the teams about which team is going to raise the most (and by 'smack talk', I mean I've been threatening Team Snow Monkeys with total annihilation) but in the end, the team you donate to is nowhere near as important to me as your donation. Heck, you can even donate for Erin D (Snow Monkeys leader) and her underhanded tactics of cornering the beginners class before the rest of us have sign up sheets, I don't mind. The money will all end up in the same place and that will help educate five villages in Guinea that previously lacked access to education.

Clicking this link will take you to our event page where you can donate either to a specific team *cough*TeamMoondance*cough* or to the general pot.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all.