March 2009 Weddings
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Rachel
I noticed that things are really picking up with the orphanage! Exciting! I also noticed that you're going the non-profit route. Will you file here or in Kenya? Just curious how that all works internationally. The hubster and I are looking to start our own non-profit here.
baby joel 5.22.11
Re: Rachel
It is moving fast! Rodgers has a nephew and a friend who are both scoping out rental houses for us right now. If we move in January (that's the earliest we would go) we have to pay our deposit for the rental in November. That's only four months!
We will have to establish an NGO in Kenya as a charitable children's institution. That way the Kenyan government can approve us to take care of orphans, and they will also probably assign kids to us.
We were planning on the US side of this to be our church, but realized that logistically it would be better to establish a non-profit. We have 5 board members, but we haven't filed our paperwork yet. My dad is one of our board members, and he and Rodgers have been working out most of these details. I do not have the mental capacity for it right now! Work, Nate, household, budget, bills, baby...my brain is full.
I can imagine you have your hands full! One of my husband's classmates started a non-profit years ago, so I've been perusing her website for clues. My husband also works for a non-profit and they agreed to help us file the paperwork. I'm trying to get our Board of Trustees together.
I can't believe you might go in January! That really is just around the corner!
I'm butting in....
Will you have to raise support or no because you are a non-profit? By support, obviously you have to have donors but I mean like a missionary where churches would support you. Does the Kenyan government help at all?
Ashlea - what kind of thing are you and your H looking at doing?
PCOS and Endo
Ovarian drilling and endo removed 1/3/12
BFP - 3/27/12
Beta's 11, 14, 57, 637, 2800
Sono showed no baby and teeny tiny sac. Waiting to M/C naturally.
^I'm wondering this, too...^
Ashley: We are raising support. Our church will be supporting us, but not 100% - though pastor's goal is for them to commit to providing our operating expenses in full for the first 18 months at least. We're not going through an established organization or officially linking to a denomination. So that cuts out any "automatic" support we might get.
We came up with a tentative budget for our operating expenses, staff salaries, and support for the children themselves. It's roughly $1500/month plus $200/month for each staff member plus $100/month for each child. This doesn't include buying land and building - that will be separate one-time expenses.
We're not really sure about the support for the children - we had estimated it lower but then heard that "free" primary education is still around $450/year, so we had to bump it up. But, we could find a school that is closer to free. Also, all the orphanage budgets we've looked at budget less than half what we estimated for food for each child. Of course, we don't know if they're feeding them balanced meals or just beans and rice. So...who knows? We'll have to wait and see for sure when we get there. We plan on pairing each kid up with one or two families/individuals in the US who will be supporting them.
We struggled with the staff salaries because it seems like such a tiny amount. We want to pay them what's fair but also culturally appropriate. Apparently it's not rude to ask Kenyans how much money they make; Rodgers has asked several of his friends so we could get an idea of what was normal these days. Then, we set our staff salaries higher than that because we couldn't imagine paying them so little, even though they will also be living on site.
We want to provide tutoring and social services (case management) for students with truancy problems, specifically those who have been to truancy court and are are likely to drop out of high school. My husband works for a non-profit and when he casually told his boss our idea, they made it seem like it was a possibility. They're helping us with a lot of the paper work.
Wow! Rachel! That is amazing that your church will commit to the first 18 months.