Aura's House July 2007 Newsletter

Dear Aura’s House friends and supporters:

They say that sometimes you have to go backwards before you can move forward again. They also say that no good deed goes unpunished. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'm referring to our site going down unexpectedly and through no fault of our own for two weeks at the end of May/beginning of June. Read our June 2007 Announcement to our mailing list here.

What's Good

Well, since all of this mayhem, we've been trying to look at the positives of the situation. First, we recently completed and exceeded our goal for the Ghana Project. and completed both Small Project #14 and Small Project #15! Stay tuned for updates and photos on these and other recent projects. We also recently received photos and a thank you letter from Lilian (4), and her family of Guatemala. See details below or visit Small Project #13.

Also, Aura's House is back online. We have a new, secure web host and have transferred our domain name as well. When the site went down, we decided to take a break from any new projects and use this opportunity to restructure and redesign the site. Kristen Palana has been putting back up all the hundreds of pages and images that make up this site and is working on setting up everything the way it was in order to then begin a new site. This new site will use the old one as an archive of our activities. Christina Sidoti kindly set up this newsletter and is continuing to update Small Projects.

Mike Epler and Anastasia Yecke are currently going over the paperwork and details regarding Aura's House becoming an official Non Profit Organization. Aura's House started as an online project that launched in 2004 working with other Non Profit Organizations like Children International. We still plan to work with them and other organizations, but having our own Non Profit status would make us more flexible when choosing new projects and we can issue our own US Tax Deductible receipts. Anyway, things have worked fine in the past, but now we are looking into this exciting possibility. (No promises as of right now...but we'll keep you posted.)

What Still Needs Fixin'

Please excuse us if you click on a link and don't find a page that was on our forum. Our forum is down and needs some reprogramming to get back up and even then we're not sure if it can be recovered.

Our Paypal donation system still works but our emails need to be re set up and attached. (We can still see if someone donated, we just have to check a different way. In any case, we're currently not taking donations at this time and have suspended all new projects until the Fall.)

Finally, our file that had all the latest thank you's for the Ghana Project and recent Small Projects got sucked into an internet wormhole and need to be manually re-added to our donors list.

So... Happy Birthday Aura's House!

We just turned three on June 30, 2007. Thanks again to all of you who got the June update and sent us your kind words of encouragement and support during our dark days. We look forward to coming back soon better and more effective than ever to help make a world of difference. Onward ho!

Best wishes,
Kristen Palana, Anastasia Yecke, Mike Epler, Christina Sidoti, and the Aura's House Team

Ghana Project Complete!

$4563 raised!

Thanks to the fundraising efforts of students from The American University of Rome, we went over our goal by $1563.

Visit this project.

Our goal was to raise $3000 to help the children at the Cape Coast School for the Deaf in Ghana. The funds raised will purchase a chicken farm, a pig farm, and a vegetable garden that will help feed the students as well as teach them agricultural skills that will help them become self-sufficient. Stay tuned for updates and photos from this project.

See photos and video from the school.

Small Project #13 Lilian Receives Gifts From Your Donations.

Our goal was to give Lilian Guadalupe Samayoa (4), and her family of Guatemala the following gifts: industrial flatware (for their income generating project of selling tortillas), bunk beds, a wardrobe, and a basket of food. We raised $540!

Read a letter of thanks from Lilian's mother.

See the gifts Lilian received from your donations.

Visit Small Project #13

Lilian (4)

Small Project #14 Completes.

Meet Christian Capin (8) of the Philippines.

$800 raised! Small Project #14 Complete in 37 days!

Visit Small Project #14

Christian was the featured student from our recently complete Santo Nino Elementary School Classroom Project in Manila.

These photos are from our Philippines Classroom Project

Meet Christian as he takes you through a day in his life.

See the most recent pictures of Christian in his home.

What's Next :

Wrrrrrrrr....Bang..Bang...Tap.....Wrrrrrr....Clank....Clank... (That's the sound of us fixing our site, putting everything back in order, and launching a new site and organizational structure.) This is a hard hat zone. Careful.

We're always looking for people to help out with fundraising, design, graphics, promotions, and keeping the site going. Interested? Please contact Kristen (kpalana@hotmail.com) if you have any comments, ideas, questions, or suggestions. Volunteer Job Positions can be found here.

• Please note, because we are restructuring our site, no donations are being accepted at this time. Stay tuned for our new site and new projects coming this Fall 2007.

Thanks for checking out our newsletter.
Don't forget to tell your family and friends about: aurashouse.com