Des Moi, IA Community Challenge - Please read

Greetings everyone and happy new year ~

I'm posting this here for a reason. A very good friend of mine (whom also happens to be my former boss) sent me this email last night. I thought that if everyone here copied the contents, printed it out, took it to their place of employment or to their school, and posted it in the break rooms; shared it with their bosses/teachers/classmates - then this would become more of a world wide individual and corporate effort than simply a local one.

I have faith you will spread the word.

My name is Joshua Whetstine and I am the Assistant Manager at Hobby Lobby in Coralville. Our staff has begun to collect money to send to aid those in need from the earthquake and resulting tsunami that struck many eastern countries, mostly Indonesia which lost 80,000 of its people.

The devastation is unmatched, as well as the need for help.

I have contacted KCRG, The Iowa City Press Citizen and the Cedar Rapids Gazette to get the following message out and we want to make sure the community hears our message.

We propose a challenge to the staff at all local businesses:
Take a collection from your staff and help us send a dollar for every life lost for those who survived. Each dollar will help provide drinking water, food, shelter and the opportunity to take very difficult and painful steps forward in hopes to rebuild their homes, communities and their lives. We are looking for individual involvement, not donations from the business itself, however we are hoping they will make their own contributions outside our challenge.

Over 100,000 people lost their lives.

To put it in to perspective, more than the population of Iowa City, Coralville and Cedar Rapids were killed in a single accident, in a single day. Put 50,000 extra people in a sold out Kinnick Stadium of 70,000 - gone in a single moment.

We call for our community to step forward and be as one.
We call for our community to be generous, supportive and compassionate towards our global neighbors. As well, members of our community have friends and family still in the areas affected by these events. So in many ways, this disaster is a local issue, so let us treat it as such.

While our staff has decided to provide financial support to the Salvation Army, there are many organizations and foundations well worthy of our community's money. If you would like to join our efforts and donate with our staff please let me know so we can make arrangements.
Contact me at 358-9262 or preferably at jlwhets@mchsi.com.

If you decide to donate to another cause please email me at jlwhets@mchsi.com. Please let me know your business name, which organization you donated to and the dollar amount donated so we can gage our success in reaching our goal and recognize the strength of our community.

Thank you for your consideration in participating in our efforts.

There are many organizations to choose from and can be found online:

Network For Good - Tsunami

Tsunami Aid Sites

 

He was 2 years ahead of me in High School. Guess this town is freaking small.

Never would have figured on him writing something like this. Guess he grew up some since High school. I'm glad he took the initiative to do something of this scale.

 

Um, just so the rest of the story is told, Indonesia has told us officially to get our troops out of their country ASAP. Our troops, who are away from their families, doing jobs they haven't been trained for, like rebuilding bridges, roads, houses, etc, are not welcome in Indonesia, a known terrorist-supporting country. I, for one, am glad to NOT help them out, especially snce they DON'T want it.

 

I would rather help the people of our own country first

 

I've got an enlightening email from someone who is actually on the USS Abraham Lincoln, the ship that is currently over in Indonesia helping out. Let me know if any of you would like to read it.