My Nonprofit Reviews

I first met Avery and Paul at an event they hosted for the Massai Girls Fund in their home when I brought my 4-H club, the 4-H Velveteens of Passaic County , to meet some Maasai guests and learn about their culture and the issues important to these people. My club had held a fund-raiser to send one girl to one of the first schools built for Maasai females for one semester. Since then, we have maintained contact with the people behind the Maasai Girls Fund, have watched them grow, and tried to support them as best we can because the need is so great. We are so impressed with the quality and integrity of this small group of dedicated people committed to helping people across the ocean grow and thrive where they are. We have sent them organic vegetable seeds to begin to help the youth learn self-sustaining agriculture for themselves and community. This is a challenge as there are many obstacles and very little water at this time to sustain agriculture, but we hope to aid them in getting a water tower to harvest rain from the roof of the school. This will not solve all the issues, but it may be enough to irrigate some food crops and set up hand-washing stations for the girls. This year we sent seeds for the children as part of a 10 year plan to begin to learn fundamentals of agri-science and agri-business and be able to learn to raise their own food, but the issue is complicated since there is little water. It was an honor for our children here to get to know the Maasai and the people behind the Maasai Girls Fund helping them help themselves. I would recommend anyone supporting this amazing group of dedicated people; any funding is stretched for the benefit of the whole community.

Last year I finally started planting the garden I always wanted. I had heard of AmpleHarvest's challenge to plant some extra so I put down 15 tomato plants instead of 5, and full packages of seeds where I only needed about 1/4 of the package. It turns out that we have so many families hurting in town financially that my extra produce never even made it to food pantries. I was simply delivering the bounty to local senior citizens that needed the food or having unemployed friends show up to help gather the harvest and take some home to their families. No-one was turned away, and the efforts of my little spade fed 10 families in need as well as my own. This year my 4-H students are going to assist with planting as well, and we hope for even more harvest to share. To that end we are trying to organize a seed swap in February to hook up gardeners with extra space with free seeds to plant. We are also gonig to ask for help from our local agricultural extension. Ample Harvest shows us we can work together to be good stewards of the land as well as each other. Celeste Hampton, The West Milford 4-H Velveteen Rabbit Club

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