Domes for Haiti

I haven't had time recently to update the blog, working diligently on writing grants and making connections. I wanted to post a quick update for those of you who are following our progress....

GREAT NEWS!! We have just received confirmation that Turtle & Hughes is donating all 3500 ft of steel conduit pipe we need to complete our initial ten dome kits to send asap to Haiti!!! This is an in kind donation valued at $2,000.00!!

We are sending our utmost gratitude and thanks to this awesome, woman owned business for supporting our project. THANK YOU SO MUCH! It's businesses like this whose ultimate goal is not always profit that set an example we hope others will follow.

Turtle & Hughes was incorporated on January 29, 1923 and continues to be privately held. In 1975, anemployee stock ownership plan (ESOP) was established, and today there are 225 employee shareholders owning 32.5% of the corporation's stock.

Currently, 60% of the common stock is owned by women, and the company is certified as a women-owned business enterprise (WBE) by the states of New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas. It is ranked among the top 50 women-owned business enterprises in the U.S.

They will be shipping the metal to our friends at Laidman Fabrication, another upstanding company located in the beautiful city of Brooklyn (woot woot) that has agreed to do all the labor absolutely free of charge. THANKS JOHN!

In other news, we have successfully negotiated a contract with our new fiscal sponsor. We are now officially sponsored under the umbrella of Not An Alternative. Thanks to Beka and Jason for sheltering our shelter project.

In still other news, we are in contact with Eric Klein from Can-do. This is an amazing organization that has been a first responder in many disasters beginning in Sri Lanka years ago. They have set up a distribution network in Haiti when they saw how badly things were being managed there with the aid supplies. They are currently working on a proposal called Sustainable Disaster Response
they have invited me to participate in the creation of a community camp in Haiti based on sustainable living systems. Currently I am working up a budget for building 30 - 40 domes with financial support from their supporters.
I will update more as this progresses. But this was the connection I had been hoping for to take my project to the next level. Helping 100 kids is definitely something, but this project now has the potential to help upwards of 300 or maybe even more.
I am very very excited by this entire unfolding of events. Tonight I am meeting with film maker Renee Bergan and some associates to discuss fundraising efforts and phase two of this project which is the trip to Haiti.

I have been speaking with some tensile structure manufacturers and have some good response about manufacturing of the domes. A very nice guy from a large corporation who is the leader in their field just asked me to email him my pattern. He seemed to feel confident that one of his manufacturers would have no problem fabricating 30 - 40 domes for our project for very cheap or even possibly as a tax write off. Keep your fingers crossed.

We are speeding along, but not quickly enough. The shipping of the dome kits takes 18 days to port au prince from Yonkers, so to meet my goal of May 1st of them actually arriving on ground in Haiti, things have got to be exponentially expeditious from this point on.

Thanks for reading. We are now an official 501c3 non profit organization.