2010 Campaign Launch | Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara

2010 Campaign Launch

Happy New Year!

2009 was a great year for the members of Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara thanks to you!

Your generous donation helped us reach our goals. By the end of the year, monetary donations totalled nearly $11,000 and volunteers had donated hundreds of hours.

We’re counting on you to help us realise our dreams in 2010, too!

Donate or learn more here.

Some of the things your donation helped us accomplish in 2009 were:

January: We established Aikido Kenkyukai Santa Barbara as a nonprofit, public benefit organization.
February: We moved to our beautiful, temporary home – Santa Barbara Buddhist Temple.
March: We received our tax exempt status, making your donations tax deductible.
April: We partnered with the Fighting Back Mentor Program of the Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse for the Free for the Weekend Teen Program.
May: We offered free classes to victims of the Jesusita Fire.
June: We participated in the Santa Barbara Gang Violence Summit
July: We laid groundwork for collaboration with Police Activities League
August: We appeared on KPMR TV to announce that we now have sponsorships for low-income kids and we had our really fun Kids’ Summer Camp.
September: We offered to sponsor 1 low-income child for every 20 new facebook fans and our YouTube channel ranked in the top 30 of all nonprofit YouTube channels.
October: We got a 5-star ranking on VolunteerMatch.com.
November: We held a 3-day Teens & Adults Seminar.
December: We tested for our next belt ranks and had a nice holiday with our families.

Some of our goals and dreams for 2010 are:

To sponsor 50 low-income children for aikido training and mentoring.
To sponsor participation in our summer camp for those same low-income children.
To once again have our own dojo so that we can have more classes each week, host high-ranking instructors from Japan, etc.
To go to Japan and train with the children in our sister dojos there.
To continue to collaborate on youth events with other nonprofit organizations in Santa Barbara, such as Police Activities League, Girls Inc., Girls’ and Boys’ Club, etc.

So please click here to donate and help make 2010 an even better year for the kids in our community. Any amount helps and is therefore greatly appreciated.

(If you’d like to contribute to a specific board member or other advocate’s grassroots fundraiser, such as Bruce Glesby, Monique Pierce, Lia Suzuki, Mazque 30 etc., please click here to see all choices.)

Again, thank you for your support in 2009 and thank you in advance for your continued support this year!

All the best to you and yours in 2010!