Buttons to Hope

Dear F.A.R.M.ers,

Today we are officially launching a big, exciting campaign called, BUTTONS to HOPE: Educating and Empowering Baao's Youth through F.A.R.M. This project aims to provide free technical-vocational college education to worthy and aspiring youth of Baao through the F.A.R.M. advocacy. Let us tell you a few things about it:

What made us come up with this campaign?

• We have seen how tremendous your support for F.A.R.M. was in so short a time that we were able to build a strong network of friends.
• Our network is sharing the same interests and obviously aiming toward the same goal, which is to help our hometown in any way we possibly can.
• We believe that each and every F.A.R.M.er in the network has the willingness and capacity to participate, cooperate and share his and her precious time, resources and ideas for a great cause.
• We are certain that given the opportunity, we can all work together to make a difference.

What is our goal?

• Our basic goal is to be able to raise One Million Pesos (Php) 1,000,000.00 by June 1. 2010. One year of hard work, one year to make a change.
• This amount shall cover the whole two-year college education of 10-12 tech-voc students from Baao. This amount, which is still small considering the number of F.A.R.M.ers we have in the network, shall be able to improve the lives of 10-12 families in Baao.

How do we reach that goal? How can you help?

• There are countless possibilities. But we need to be focused and organized.
• We can do charity-dinners, concerts, auctions, house parties or any event that does not only raise funds but build awareness and elicit participation from more and more dedicated people.
• We will also sell special, limited-edition F.A.R.M. bracelets for this cause.
• Our group is now working on how we can be formally organized into a non-government organization but it will be a long process and it will take time. While we do that, we start with the activities to raise funds for Buttons to Hope.

Who will handle the funds? How can we be protected?

• We have initially assigned Jet Arroyo-Carriaga to be the custodian of funds, and Cherry Pinoy to be auditor. We will update you later on how to remit funds.
• We should all be conscious and guarded that schemers might take advantage of our project to extort money from people. As soon as we finalize the bank account and remittance arrangements and guidelines, we will let you know.
• To ensure transparency, we will be posting regular updates on the progress of our project. We hope to also post the complete list of project officers, soon.

These are just initial ideas. We will appreciate receiving suggestions, ideas, comments and most importantly, messages of hope and encouragement for us (you may email us at farmbaao@gmail.com and put Buttons to Hope as subject). This is not an easy task so we hope we can all cooperate and make Buttons to Hope a big success!

Jane Barcenas-Bisuna
Program Director, Buttons to Hope

Bernadette de los Santos
Founding Chairman, Buttons to Hope