MCI Dinner

Last night MCI Girls to Girls hosted a fundraising dinner. We were able to tell the guests about our group and our current project. The dinner went wonderfully, everything went according to plan and we served a five course meal to 13 guests. With the help of a very generous caterer on the island, Sheri Hamlow, we put together and served this menu:

Appetizers

Vegetable Samosas

Nyama Choma (Beef Thinly Sliced)

 First course

Saladi (East African Salad Relish)

Peanut Soup

Chapati Bread

 Second course

Lamb Stir-Fry

Chicken (or Tofu) in Coconut Curry Sauce

Pulao (Aromatic Rice Pilaf)

Kunde (Kenyan Black-Eyed Peas with Kale)

 Dessert

Sticky Toffee Pudding

 We spent months planning this dinner. Our group put a lot of work into it, and everyone did such a great job following through on their jobs and getting things done. Tess Mueller, Taryn Mulvihill, Rayana Weller, Hannah Van Dusen, Clara Atwell, Silvia Henley, Natalie VanDevanter, Kate Atwell, Mallory Breen, Callan Foster, Lauren Henley, Audrey Benner, Emily Geyman and Aubrey Kraabel all put on this dinner with the help of Sheri. We are all so happy with how it went and hope we’ll be able to host another one sometime!

Hannah and Mallory making the samosa dough

Aubrey and Tess starting the sticky toffee pudding

Sheri chopping vegetables

Hannah and Mallory making the samosa filling

Aubrey, Mallory, Tess and Hannah

Hannah and Sheri

Aubrey and Tess working on wrapping the cookies for the gift bags

Lauren and Clara putting the gift bags together

Aubrey, Silvia, Callan and Rayana

Callan and Rayana rolling out the samosa dough

Lauren with the gift bags

The view from Matt’s house

Rayana putting together samosas

Taryn, Natalie, Kate, Tess, Aubrey, Clara, Emily and Audrey before the guests arrived

Clara, Audrey, Natalie, Tess, Aubrey, Kate, Taryn and Emily

The servers and cooks before the dinner started

Newspaper Article

Check out the Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber this week, there is an article on our group on page 4! You can also find the article online on the Beachcomber’s website, the article is titled “Girls on Vashon work to help improve lives of girls in Kenya”. 

Bake Sale Postponed

Just to let everyone know, the bake sale we were planning for this Saturday (the 2nd) has been postponed. We plan on having it a little bit later, in the spring. We’ll let everyone know when we reschedule it.

Our Plans for This Year

It’s been a while since we posted anything! We’ve all been incredibly busy with our first year in high school.
Natalie, Audrey and I spent this past fall running cross country. We had an incredible experience, the cross country team was like a second family, and it was so fun to all run together. Kate and Rayana joined the high school soccer team. They did a fantastic job and fit right in with the upperclassmen. Taryn played volleyball for the fourth year now. She has an amazing serve, she’s nearly unstoppable! Tess, Rayana and Silvia are all working hard in ballet. I have no idea how they are all so graceful and flexible. I watched Tess and Rayana perform in the nutcracker this winter, they were fabulous! Kate, Natalie and Rayana also started basketball this winter. Their team is very young, it’s mostly freshman, but they all get along very well.
At our last meeting, we discussed what events we wanted to have in the New Year.
This year, our biggest goal is to bring a couple students and teachers from the schools, here to the U.S.A. It would be incredible to bring a couple girls here, they would get to meet everyone in the group and see America and its culture. We are hoping that they will be able to come this spring. Of course, there are many obstacles that we will have to pass to get them here, but we are working on figuring it all out. Our biggest problem at the moment is raising the money to pay for the airfare. We have some money left over from previous events, and we have a generous donor who will help us by matching whatever we make. We are all really looking forward to having the girls here, and we will work hard to make sure it happens.

To start off our fundraising for this, we are going to hold a bake sale in front of the Vashon Thriftway on February 2nd starting at Noon. If you’re in the neighborhood, feel free to stop by and talk to us, we’d be happy to answer any questions you have about our organization, and If you’re in the mood, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of delicious treats!

-Aubrey

Dare to DREAM

Deliver Rightful Education Across Maasai 

The Sheep Dog Trials

Last weekend, Girls to Girls had an entertainment booth for kids at our local event called the Vashon Sheep Dog Trials. The sheep dog trials is where people bring their border collies to herd sheep in a competition. Lots of people come to watch, and bring their kids and dogs along to play. When the kids get bored, the parents need something to entertain them, which is why we were asked to do the kids booth. It  was a great deal for us, because we got tell people about our program, and got all the money that we made in the process. We ended up being very successful, and making $480 dollars, which brings our total savings up to $3,700!

I am very excited about the work we have done in the past month. Now, everyone has certain positions that they take on so we all have a job. For example, my job is to be the presentation person, and also help get the blog going (which I will need to start doing a better job with!) Tess has the job of recruiting people for our group and keeping everyone else in line. Natalie takes notes at all the meetings, and sends them out on email for us all to read. These are just three of the jobs, but there are several others that play very important roles in the group. With our new system in place, it is more efficient and gives everyone a chance to help participate.

-Kate

Kate and Audrey setting up our booth

Kate and Audrey working in the booth

Aubrey helping make gods eyes

Callan (who volunteered at this event) helping with friendship bracelets

Clara helping with rock painting

Its easy to forget  the poverty in Africa when you’re a million miles away.  But I’ve been thinking about how these girls at the schools greatly value and rely on this opportunity for an education. For if it was taken away they would follow their mother’s roles which includes having to build, cook, and sleep in those small dark huts.  These schools are really their only chance to change their future.  I now understand the importance of their education.  I hope MCI  girls to girls will be able to achieve the goal to teach others about that importance.

- Audrey

Strawberry Festival Booth

Last weekend, Vashon had its summer strawberry festival, for anyone who doesn’t know what the Strawberry Festival is, it’s when a couple thousand people swarm into Vashon’s town. Booths line the street selling all sorts of different things, and people roam around to look at all the different items. There is a big parade in the morning, then everyone goes around, and does whatever they want.

This year, MCI Girls to Girls decided that having a booth would be a good way to make money for our project, and inform people on what we our doing. All week with lots of help from Kimberly Benner, we worked on setting up our booth. Then during the festival, all our friends volunteered to help out during the day, selling the jewelry we had, and informing people what we were trying to accomplish.

In the end we raised 1,200 dollars which we want to spend on buying library supplies for Mara Hills. We also have been considering possibly starting a student exchange between ours and their school! I am very excited about the progress we have made, and think that MCI Girls to Girls has established a very nice start.

Kate

The necklace display in our booth

Our backdrop for the booth, made by a very helpful family friend, Dori

Our note card and information display

Our information board

Our board about Maasai Villages

Aubrey, Nicole (Aubrey’s cousin) and Clara in front of the booth

The street view of our booth