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Hurricane relief - combined thread

Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2005 6:01 pm
by Bruce N H
Please read the below post from Joe. In addition to this donation opportunity below, there are currently some auctions listed in this FBTB thread and more are in the works, and more will be announced in the days ahead. Please help out if you can.

Bruce

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Hi all,

We have all seen the devastation that Hurricane Katrina left in New Orleans, and with it the displaced families and children. They all have little or nothing from their homes and have been placed in shelters around the country. Companies and organizations from around the world are assisting in relief efforts, including The LEGO Group.

LEGO employees around the world have been collecting money internally that is being matched dollar for dollar by the Edith and Godtfred Kirk Christiansen Foundation in the name of the Relief Fund and will be given to the Red Cross.

The LEGO Group has invited the adult LEGO community to join this donation matching program. If you’re interested in participating, please send your monetary donation to:

LEGO Group
Attn: AFOL Katrina Relief
555 Taylor Road
Enfield, CT 06082

Checks need to be made out to the Red Cross. Check or money order is the preferred method of submission. If you have any questions or concerns, Jake McKee (jake@lego.com) has offered to address them as quickly as possible.

In addition to the program outlined above, the LEGO Group is working on several other Katrina relief efforts, which Jake has promised more details on soon. In the meantime, we can announce that monetary donations will be collected at the 25 LEGO stores around the United States, with those donations matched by the Christiansen Foundation as well.

Every donation counts, and with the help of the LEGO Group, the community’s effort will go farther to helping out relief efforts.

Thank you very much to everyone who can help out.If you can’t give through this program, please donate or volunteer in another way. The hurricane victims need you!

Joe Meno

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 2:32 pm
by Bruce N H
Hi all,

As noted above, we'd urge you to help with hurricane relief if you are able. If you donate to the Red Cross through LEGO, they will match your donation.

However, we also wanted to come up with a more personal way to help out. There are lots of families who have lost everything, and many of these have ended up in the Houston, Texas area, where our own Anthony Sava lives. Anthony has agreed to act as a collection point for a toy drive to give something to families with kids. Here's the idea--you go out and buy a LEGO set and mail it to Anthony (e-mail him for his postal address). He'll gather these sets up and deliver them to the Salvation Army, who are distributing supplies to families hit by the hurricane and flooding. If you are unable to send a set, you can also send him money via PayPal, and he will go on a shopping trip to add to the donated sets.

Image

We all probably buy a fair amount of LEGO through the year. Here's your chance to share a little of that happiness with some kids who are hurting. Who knows, in a couple of years they might be the new AFOLs joining our forums. :)

Thanks,
The C-C Admin team

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 3:57 pm
by Tedward
Bruce N H wrote:
... Anthony has agreed to act as a collection point for a toy drive to give something to families with kids. Here's the idea--you go out and buy a LEGO set and mail it to Anthony (e-mail him for his postal address). He'll gather these sets up and deliver them to the Salvation Army, who are distributing supplies to families hit by the hurricane and flooding. ...
Wow I put just such a drive on the agenda for tonight's VicLUG meeting (see:LUGNET msg.) If the guys go for it I will suggest we send our sets via Anthony.

Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2005 5:56 pm
by Bruce N H
Cool, Tedward! That'd be great.

One additional suggestion on the toy drive - we've all become adept at spotting sales and clearances. Double your donation dolar by finding bargains if possible. If you have a Tuesday Morning store near you, for instance, they do a lot of clearances - I found a Spiderman set, Star Wars mini, several Bionicle etc, all at half price, which allowed me to make a larger donation than I could have at full price. (Of course this is a great place when shopping for yourslef as well.)

Bruce

Posted: Fri Sep 16, 2005 5:22 pm
by SavaTheAggie
This post is going to be repeated on several websites, so please excuse me for spamming. However...

As an update to the Toy Drive:

So far since it was announced, I have recieved four request for my address (and thus hopefully four future donations) and three monitary donations totalling $50 (plus one misc. donation).

To those of you who have/are donating, thank you so very much!

But there could be so much more...

Now maybe I simply just have unrealistic expectations, or maybe there are people who just haven't asked for my address (or got it from someone else), or maybe people are just waiting for the weekend to go out to the store.

Heck, I'm sure that many people have already donated to other causes and aren't worrying about the toy drive.

If this is the case, then I sincerely apologize in advance.

But I just can't help but feel a bit disappointed in the quantity of support thus far. As far as I am aware, the announcement for the Toy Drive has been posted to Bricklink, BZPower, Classic-Castle, FBTB, Lugnet and presumably 1000steine.de (didn't check the website, but did recieve a monitary donation from one of those folks).

I don't know just how many people the announcement reached, but of those websites I'm sure there are at least 5,000 people available. Possibly much more. And to date I've had 8 people express interest in participating?

Please, if you can donate a few unopened sets, by all means, do so!

Or you can even send money for me to buy sets on your behalf. Here in my area I have 2 TRUs, a KB, 3 Wal-Marts, 2 Targets, 2 Kohls, 2 Tuesday Mornings, a Burks Outlet, and a Toy Liquidators. I have a Paypal account (no credit card payments, please), or you can send me a check or money order or whatever. I will do my best to stretch your donation as far as I can.

If you've read this far, thank you for your time. I don't mean to be preachy or beg, honestly, I don't. If you know me, you should know I'm not (usually, anyway) that sort of person. But I just want to be able to make a substantial donation on behalf of this community. I'm not asking for a semi-truck load... but a pickup truck bed-full would be nice.

I just want to avoid having to hand over two grocery bags of LEGO sets and say "Here is the donation on behalf of the online AFOL community."

So if you're interested, if you want my address or paypal account address, or if you have any questions, please email me at savatheaggie at ev1 dot net.

--Anthony

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:33 pm
by Bruce N H
Hey,

I just wanted to echo what Tony said above. No need to go out and get a carload of sets. If a bunch of us each simply get one small set it would still add up to a large donation when combined. You may want to hold off for a few days on shipping, though, since now we've got a second Hurricane problem that will be disrupting everything in the Houston area.

In a third LEGO effort for Katrina relief, you can also participate in Bricklink for Relief today. Follow that link to find a list of Bricklink sellers that will be donating today's proceeds to the Red Cross.

Bruce

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 6:14 pm
by SavaTheAggie
This is my final post about toy drive until it is complete (and at which time I'll post pics of the final 'pile' and the delivery).

I had to ecavuate for Hurricane Rita, but there's still a toy drive! Had I not had to evacuate, I would have posted for final call for donations.

However, that time has passed. Waiting much longer for donations will delay this toy drive further than it needs to be.

If you have a donation in transit, please, email me and let me know. I've recieved 4 boxes thus far.

All told, I've had only about 20 participants in total. Fortunately, for the sake of the community, those 20 or so participants donated very very generously, and I've been able to gather a modest pile of donations.

Most of the participants have donated money, and so I've been doing my best to buy what I could. Even while I was evacuated to Texarkana, Arkansas, I visited the local TRU and was able to take advantage of a huge pile of green tagged, buy two get one free, X-pods (effectively $1.33 each). I also was able to pick up over the last few weeks some duplo, jack stone pirates, and some other random sets, even including discount bionicle and clickits.

If you haven't already sent your donation, unless you can get it to me VERY quickly, I'm afraid its too late.

If you want to donate money, there's still (VERY LITTLE) time. There isn't much to speak of left, here in Houston, but I'll do my best to hunt it down.

To all of the people who have donated: Thank you so very very much. You will be making a few kids very very happy. I won't name names, so you'll have to stand up and take a bow on your own.

--Anthony

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2005 9:29 pm
by Lord_Of_The_LEGO
SavaTheAggie wrote:To all of the people who have donated: Thank you so very very much. You will be making a few kids very very happy.
I'm glad I could help. Kudos to you, Tony, for managing this, and to Bruce and Joe Meno and all the others who helped organize everything. :D

Changed Joe's name ;) - Lenny

Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 4:31 pm
by Bruce N H
Hey,

I'm going to un-sticky this as Anthony has collected the sets already and will bring them to the distribution center. Thank you to all who donated. We still encourage you to take part in other relief efforts, including the Red Cross donation through TLC's matching funds program.

Bruce

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 10:14 pm
by Bruce N H
Hey all,

Thank you to everyone who participated in the Hurricane Relief Toy Drive, and especially to Anthony who has gathered these sets, bought other sets with money he was sent, and is bringing these for distribution to displaced families. Check it out:

Image Image Image Image


It looks there there are going to be a bunch of happy kids due to your generosity. Thanks!

Bruce

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 11:40 pm
by Lord_Of_The_LEGO
Bruce N H wrote:Thank you to everyone who participated in the Hurricane Relief Toy Drive, and especially to Anthony who has gathered these sets, bought other sets with money he was sent, and is bringing these for distribution to displaced families.

It looks there there are going to be a bunch of happy kids due to your generosity.
That is awesome. I'm glad at least some kids will have the gift of LEGO after such disaster.

Play well.

Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 2:25 am
by ottoatm
wow - You guys really pulled off a successful campaign - I'd say there are some great sets in there, it shows a very high level of generosity. :)

Well done!