| How We Are Helping
2004 Update
(prior to Wintersweet Foundation, Inc.)
December 2004:
Blanket Drive
In December of 2004, Angela received an email from Sending
Our Love Destination China asking for donations for a blanket
drive. IKEA factory in China offered warm fluffy blankets
for $2 each and Love Without Boundaries would place an order
after Christmas for blankets to deliver to the children in
China’s orphanages.
Together with family and friends they
began selling handmade ornaments and scarves and collecting
donations. All of the funds raised were sent to “Sending
Our Love Destination China” who then matched the donation.
We were so pleased that together we were able to send close
to 600 blankets to China’s orphanages. These blankets
truly helped to keep the children warm throughout the cold
winter months in orphanages with no heat or bedding.
2005 Update
To continue our efforts to help orphaned children around the
world, we began and completed all 501C-3 and corporation paperwork
to form the Wintersweet Foundation, Inc. Volunteers have started
creating and selling handmade items, artwork and quilts to
raise funds and to use for future auctions. Our special thanks
to Kathy Frederick for donating her beautiful handmade scarves
and Jeanne Tomasello for selling the scarves to help raise
funds for many of these children.
March 2005: Orthopedic
Shoes
Funds were sent to “Love Without Boundaries” to
provide four of China’s orphans with orthopedic shoes.
December 2005:
Eye Surgery Patient – Baby Lan
Funds were sent to “Love Without Boundaries” to
help with the eye surgery for baby Lan (see
Our Children for her story).
December 2005: Nutritional Care
Wintersweet Foundation has made arrangements with “Love
Without Boundaries” to have the food and nutritional
needs provided for one child each year. We hope to support
many more children in this program.
2006 Update
We hope to help many more children
in 2006. This year we will to continue to work very hard at
organizing our foundation and creating items for our auctions
and fundraising efforts. We also welcome anyone interested
in volunteering with our efforts to help these children.
January 2006: Surgical Patients
– Babies Tong, Joseph, Yun and Robby
Funds were sent to “Love Without
Boundaries” to help with the medical needs of four more
Children: Baby Tong, Baby Joseph, Baby Yun, and Baby Robby.
Our special thanks to the Knutte Family for their generous
donation. Click
on Our Children for their stories and updates.
January 2006:
Foster Care for Ada
Wintersweet Foundation has made arrangements with “Love
Without Boundaries” to provide monthly funding for a
foster family for a little girl named Ada. Click
on Our Children to read Ada’s story.
February 2006:
Heart Surgery Patient – Baby Ming
On February 4, 2006 a group of wonderful families and friends
celebrated Chinese New Year at the Szechwan Beijing Restaurant
in Oak Park, IL. As part of the celebration they held a special
raffle and to help cover the surgical costs for baby Ming.
Our sincere thanks to these families for their kindness. They
have helped change this child’s life. Click
on Our Children to read Ming’s story.
February 27,
2006: Heart Surgery Patient – Baby Miao
Funds not needed for Baby Joseph were reallocated to help
with the medical needs of this sweet baby girl from Fujian
who has a dislocated hip on the right side that needs to be
surgically corrected. We will continue to try to raise the
funds needed to help baby Miao. Her surgery will cost $4,000.
Click on Our Children
to read Baby Miao’s story.
February 27,
2006: 1st Signature Quilt is almost ready!
Our 1st signature quilt will be ready in the next week or
two to start collecting donations and names. The quilt will
feature 400 names of families, individuals, groups or business
that would like to make a donation of $20 or more. Those donating
will receive a piece of extra fabric used in the quilt along
with a special thank you card and photo of the quilt. All
of the proceeds will go to help the children in China’s
orphanages and those needing surgery and medical care. We
will work along with LWB to raise funds with this quilt. It
is our hope to raise over $8,000 on this 1st quilt and will
create additional quilts if we get more than 400 signatures.
This will be a yearly fundraiser for us and we are so excited
about it. After this project is completed and funds are sent
to LWB we will give updates on our website letting everyone
know how the children have been helped.
February 2006:
Volunteers Needed
We are continuing to look for volunteers to help with the
Wintersweet Foundation to create many new and exciting programs
and opportunities to help children around the world. If you
are interested in becoming a part of the Wintersweet Foundation,
please contact Angela Balazs at 262-997-4624 or by email at
angela@wintersweet.org. We are a non-profit 501-C3 foundation
operated by volunteers. There is no payroll and we try very
hard to have every penny we raise go to directly to helping
orphaned children around the world and families adopting children.
March 2006: Children
in Guatemala and Africa
We are currently contacting organizations that help orphaned
children in Guatemala and Africa in the hope of setting up
additional programs to help these children.
March 6, 2006:
Catholic Chess Project - Nigeria
We are starting to work with Mrs. Susan J. Weems from the
Catholic Chess Project to plan ways to help the orphaned children
living in at the Holy Family Children’s Home in Nigeria.
We will be helping to sponsor the children and to raise funds
for a larger nursery for the babies. In July Susan will be
traveling to visit the children and we have asked her to have
the children create artwork that we can put into quilts and
to use as note cards and prints to help raise funds for the
beautiful children. Their web site is http://www.catholicchess.com.
March 6, 2006:
Quilting For Children Exhibit
We are starting to organize and plan a quilt exhibit to help
raise funds for orphaned children around the world. We will
be contacting quilters, guilds, quilt shops, groups, schools,
etc… to create quilts post cards size to wall hangings
to be featured in the exhibit. We are also looking for a museum
or museums to host the exhibits. Quilts will also be photographed
to use in note cards and a coffee table book to raise funds
to sponsor programs that directly help change the lives of
these children. This will be a large and ambitious project
but we will do everything we can to make it a success. More
information to come in the upcoming months and we hope to
have kick this project off this summer.
March 13,2006 – Signature
Quilts Update
We have finished the top of the signature quilt for Guatemala
and are continuing to work on the tops for China and Nigeria.
They should all be done by April and ready to start asking
for donations. We will also be making smaller quilts to give
to business to ask them to hold separate fundraisers to help
all of the children. More information and photos to come soon.
April 2006: Web Site Launch
Our new web site is launched.
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