The Love Alliance Newsletter #23
May 1, 2009

2009 is officially one third over and we are proud to say that The Love Alliance community continues to grow and make a large impact on the world and the communities around us. We attended a few events this month; so welcome to all of the new Love Alliance members that have joined in the month of April! This month is a big month for us, so buckle up.

LAST MONTH

HAPPENINGS

Last month The Love Alliance was privileged to host three separate TOMS Shoes events in Melbourne, FL, St. Louis, MO and Columbus, GA. The events went fantastic. For every pair of shoes that were purchased at the event another pair of shoes was given to a child in need. A big high five to our St. Louis group that was able to sell about 40 pairs of shoes at their event. Not only did these shoes provide children in need with shoes but it also raised $8 for every pair of shoes sold for The Love Alliance. We know many of you did not live in the area of these events, or for some of you your size may not have been available at the event you attended. Because of this we have worked with TOMS Shoes to provide the entire Love Alliance community with a discount code that will reduce your cost by $4, will of course donate a pair of shoes to a child in need and will also donate $4 to The Love Alliance. Click here to get your feet into a pair of TOMS and don’t forget to use the TOMS Shoes promo code: LOVEALL

We were honored last month to have been invited to speak at the HOBY Mid-Florida Seminar. We were able to share The Love Alliance vision with a large group of extremely passionate young people. We were super impressed with the creativity and drive of these current and future young leaders. We were able to speak with so many of them about getting linked up with The Love Alliance and are excited for the many potential Love Alliance groups that will be forming from this in the near future. If you attended the conference, or even if you didn’t and are interested in joining or starting a Love Alliance group in your area simply email groups@thelovealliance.net

In April we were privileged to have been invited on the Direct TV show “RAW TV.” We had such a fantastic experience and are so grateful for their interest in what we are doing. The scheduled airdate for the show is May 3rd on DirecTV NRB Network Channel. RAW TV is a production of Southeastern University. We are thrilled to be able to work with them more and to hopefully launch a Love Alliance group there in the near future.

ACTION PROJECT

Last month The Love Alliance community hosted and participated in community clean-ups across the country and the world and oh did we clean things up. There are simply too many clean ups to describe them all in this newsletter. But we would love to tell you about the one that excited us the most this month. This month our T.L.A. Melbourne Group was able to assist the students of No Limits Academy in a community clean up. No Limits Academy is a local school for handicapped children. We were blown away at the children’s excitement to be able to give back to their community and lend a helping hand. These children live every day with so many physical limitations, and yet their beautiful hearts jumped at the opportunity to give back. Despite their physical limitations they were able to contribute so much. This experience serves as an encouragement to us all that if these children, who struggle everyday, have the ability to give so much then what excuse do we have? Click here to view some photo’s of this clean up in the You In Action section of our website. We will also be posting a video shortly for all of you that were not able to take part.

THIS MONTH

HAPPENINGS

If you didn’t catch it in the title of this months newsletter, The Love Alliance is in a race to win $10,000 this month on a website called Ideablob and we need your help. If we are fortunate enough to win, $7,500 will go towards the development of a curriculum on various social justice issues and the many ways we can make a difference towards these issues in our every day lives. Beyond physical literature the curriculum will also include engaging educational videos that this prize will also help fund. The remaining $2,500 will go towards printing and distributing 60,000 educational flyers. This will bring us extremely close to fulfilling and hopefully surpassing our goal of distributing 100,000 educational flyers in 2009. At the beginning of the month the voting begins across the board. The month is split into 4 weeks. The top two voted on ideas for each week go to a showdown in the fourth week where a vote off will happen. So here is what we need you to do: 1. Click here to vote right now. The way we will win is if we all Vote This Week. You can only vote once in the preliminaries and once at the end of the month during the showdown so don’t worry, this wont be something you have to worry about remembering every day this month. 2. Encourage everyone you know to vote this week. Email, Facebook, Myspace posts, Twitter you know them all, let’s use them to get the word out for people to vote. Finally if and when we get into the final showdown at the end of the month we will need your vote just one more time. The voting for April’s winner just finished up yesterday and the winner had about 850 votes. We are confident from our experience with last year’s Myspace Impact Award voting that you all will rally around us to win.

We will be continuing on our Promotion/Fundraising Contest we started last month until the end of tour. The grand prize of two products of your choosing from The Love Alliance store along with a sticker pack and a button pack will be awarded at the beginning of June. The lead recruiter has currently recruited 31 people on Facebook so be sure to continue to recruit your friends so you can catch up. The top fundraiser (between both Facebook and Myspace) currently holds the lead with $94 raised. Be sure to set fundraising goals on Facebook and/or promote your PayPal badge so you can take the lead. Click here to learn more about this Promotion/Fundraising Contest. If you have any questions email info@thelovealliance.net

We leave for our almost three month long summer tour in just 38 days. Thank you to everyone who submitted intern applications to come out with us this summer. We will be notifying the applicants of our decision by the end of today. Last year’s tour sparked countless Love Alliance groups all over the U.S., making an exponential impact. We are confident attending festivals this year will be just as, if not more effective in impacting communities for positive change. Just one of the festivals we attend typically brings in 80,000 people. That’s 80,000 people we can educate on the issues of social justice we represent as well as their ability to impact these issues in their every day lives. While the summer festivals are definitely where we need to be, they are also a large financial burden for the organization. The estimated cost for our tour this summer is $10,000. That number includes booth fees, travel expenses, etc. but does not include the cost of printing merchandise, another big expense. We made back all of the invested money last tour, but due to the nature of festivals and all of the expenses they require, about 75% of the cost of tour is needed before we leave. So that means we have 38 days to raise the money we need for a three month long tour. If you would like to partner with us to ensure the success of this summer’s tour we would be so grateful for any donations you may be able to give &/or fundraisers you may put on. Of course all donations are tax deductible and can be made either through our secure online donation system or by check/money order made out to “The Love Alliance. These can be sent to “The Love Alliance, P.O. Box 111431, Palm Bay, FL 32911.”

ACTION PROJECT

Now for the big reveal of May’s Action Project. This month we will be Remembering the Poor. We are all acutely aware of rising poverty levels all around us. Hundreds of thousands of people have been and are currently being laid off all around the world. This month we will be assisting those places that provide for people in their hardest hours, food pantries. Food pantries exist to help meet basic needs of struggling people. Because the need for food pantries has drastically risen we need to help them meet that need. There are a few ways that we can help our local food pantries this month:

Firstly, you can hold a canned food drive. You can do this by collecting non-perishable’s from family, friends, classmates, church, co-workers, group members etc. You can also go door to door in your area with baskets for you local food pantry asking if individuals have anything that they would like to donate to help those who are struggling in your community.

Another thing we have found is that while food pantries give out so much, they are many times very limited in the help that people give to them. Who knows, possibly the biggest help could come from you cleaning up, organizing, painting or volunteering a shift at your local food pantry. Give them a call; see what they are in need of.