What is BRIDGE, anyway?
I wanted to bring attention something that I haven't emphasized enough so far. I have always encouraged you all to take a leadership roll, but I have never really explained what I meant. BRIDGE is a leaderless organization.
Some would call us a "do-ocracy" which is to say that whoever gets it done gets to decide how it gets done.
Sure, the school wants us to have a "president" and other "officers" but often, the people who contribute the most aren't even "members". To me, if you help us, if you come to a meeting, if you are on the mailing list, you are a member. As far as leadership goes, we have no leaders, only doers.
It is a kind of distributed way of getting things done. In traditional organizations, the reward for involvement is a paycheck which encourages a hierarchical organization. In BRIDGE, we are united by a common vision of a world that is a slightly better place. In our instance, that is a world which includes a small library in Morrito. If you help BRIDGE, it is because you share that vision, and you feel rewarded by something deeper than money.
Trying to institute a hierarchy "you do this my way or the highway" will only serve to run off people who could have aided us in our common vision. Throughout history, people have operated in these communities guided only by their shared vision and community spirit. BRIDGE is just bringing it back, making it real, and we need your help to build our community.
All of that having been said, we can not accomplish our vision without concrete and rebar, and that takes money. Having worked on this issue a lot over the last 2 months (raising over $700 in the process) we have found that the best way to raise money is to ask for it. So we are instituting the:
Thanksgiving 2008 Call-a-thon/Road-trip
As the SFSU students on this mailing list know, we get the week of Thanksgiving off. Please don't think that you can't come if you're not a student. We need your help too.
For BRIDGE to remain on schedule to build the library this January, we have to have the rest of the $12,000 raised by the end of November incidentally enough.
Classes get out on Firday the 21st of November.
On Saturday the 22nd, we will all congregate for the callathon (Location TBD). On Saturday, most cell phone plans have unlimited minuits and free long distance on weekends. We will all bring a list of everyone we know and their phone numbers. If you don't feel comfortable calling your friends and family asking for money, you can switch lists with someone else. If you don't have a cell phone you can use, we will hook up computers and laptops with microphones and use Skype. If you really can't be there, give us your list so that we can call your friends and family.
We will hang out, call people, ask for money, play some video games, and eat takeout. If we don't reach our goal on Saturday, we will continue on Sunday.
However, if we do manage to raise all of the funding on Saturday, we will hop in our cars and go on a road trip somewhere togeather on Sunday through Wednesday. Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Denver, the Grand Canyon, Mexico, St Louis, or wherever else we decide to go.
We will return to San Francisco on Wednesday the 26th, the day before Thanksgiving so you can all get some turkey with your folks.
Feel free to participate in any portion of this week that you want, just come to the callathon or just come on the road trip.
We can't build this library alone.
If you have been on the fence about getting more involved with BRIDGE, here is your chance. Help us make our callathon a success that we can build that library.
PS. we have a website: www.bridgenicaragua.org
Older Stuff
We have a new website at BRIDGENicaragua thanks to Tim O. Hats off to ya! Our Paypal account is up and running and still have a couple of seats left in our January trip. Please check it out, send it to your friends and make a donation if you can.
Our finances page will be coming up soon!
Kristine attended the SF Rotary lunch last week and twas a lot of fun. We are planning to go back next week, Tuesday the 30th of September from 12-1:30. Check out SF Rotary for more information.
We are having BBQ's at SFSU this week and in the future so please come down and have a hot dog or hamburger with us. Do you realize that each meal you buy is roughly the minimum daily wage of a Nicaraguan?
If you have announcements you would like to add to the next newsletter, add them here.