Dear Friends of DOERS,

Thank you all so much for contributing to our efforts! Here's a report on what we've accomplished so far. The event on Dec. 1 was very successful. We collected 197 blankets, $1139.10 for food for Afghani refugees, plus a whole lot of kits and resources. Here are the tallies: 159 school kits, 174 health kits, 64 relief kits for families of 4, 50 newborn kits, 7 sewing kits, 118 yards plus 2 boxes of fabric, 3 boxes of light baby clothing, 15 boxes of clothing, 4 boxes of soap, 2 boxes of crayon boxes, 1 huge box of pencils, 2 boxes of sheets and pillow cases, 2 boxes of extra health and relief supplies, 1 box of extra school supplies, 1 box of newborn supplies, and one box of bandages!

It was quite a wonderful scene: as the donors poured in, volunteers organized the various kinds of aid, completed kits, and boxed them up. At the back of the church hall, about 8 women were sewing kit bags, some of them with patches decorated by kids the night before at the collection event hosted by the Madison Area Peace Coalition. (They collected $383.10, and many blankets and kits.) Down one side of the hall were tables laden with handmade pillows, ceramics, jewelry, etchings, wall hangings, and more, with the centerpiece of the art sale being the 50 hand-crocheted potholders created by Betsy Tuttle. The sale of many of these items resulted in $1273 being raised for the Afghan Women's Mission, a tax-deductible group which sends money to RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, to support emergency relief work among the refugees.

At 3:30 Ned Powell arrived with his 'Solidarity Truckers' truck, and eager hands quickly loaded it. At the end of the day, we had collected $222 for shipping, and $155 in 9 new memberships for DOERS. Yes, DOERS is now a membership organization, and we sure could use your dues to pay for our organizing costs like copying, postage, a P.O. box, etc. Up until now, the small group of DOERS just paid for everything out of pocket, but now we're asking the wider community to chip in by becoming a member for $5 to $50 per year, whatever you feel you can afford.

In the 5 days since Dec. 1, another $1,195 in donations has arrived in the mail, bringing our total collected to $12,597.23! Plus, Students for a Peaceful Response, at West High School in Madison, sponsored a teach-in on the crisis on Dec. 3, and collected 19 blankets and around $230! I should also mention that many, many schools, churches, mosques, Girl Scout troops and clubs organized around this effort and showed up with bags and boxes full of supplies.

Thanks to the power of networking, we have managed to secure free trucking for the supplies! Borkholder Furniture, which is owned by a Mennonite, and operates out of Goshen, will donate a 'backhaul' in their empty truck in the next couple of weeks. This means that we can send on the $222 collected for shipping to the MCC for food! It also means that we can still accept donations of kits and resources if people missed the collection. You would need to bring it to one of our houses. Contact me if you need to do this.

We would like to thank all of the donors who contributed kits, resources and money, and all of the volunteers who arrived, started working, and made everything go so smoothly! You are a wonderful resource, and we want to do more with you! After the holidays we will start planning another effort, we don't know what yet. Please contact me if you have ideas, and if you want to be part of the planning efforts. If you live in the Madison area, and could help with the transfer of stuff from Ned's truck to the Borkholder truck, please contact me. It will probably be between Dec. 14 and 18.

We can still take donations to buy food for the refugees. If you are following the news, you know what dire straits they are in, as the snows have started. Please make checks out to Mennonite Central Committee, and mail them to DOERS, P.O. Box 259525, Madison, WI 53725-9525. You can mail checks to DOERS, to join, to the same address.

So many people stopped to thank us for organizing this event, and we say, 'You're welcome'. But it wouldn't have been the huge success it was without the enthusiasm and initiative which so many of you showed in organizing your friends, colleagues and perfect strangers. I am sure that we will go on to do some great things together!

Yours, for DOERS, Phyllis Hasbrouck           608-251-6892