THE LOVE ALLIANCE NEWSLETTER #28

October 5, 2009

The weather is getting colder and the leaves are starting to change.  Fall is here!

LAST MONTH - HAPPENINGS

Last month was a very busy month for us as we temporarily moved from the space coast of Florida up to New York City.  We will be spending the fall in New York City and we are excited to get more people in the Northeast connected to what we are doing.  We are hoping to get more involved in the city and work along side other organizations and places like the New York Dream Center.  

Even though our summer tour has been over, we were still busy with festivals in September.  Our amazing intern Candice along with our friend Justin set up a booth at Revelation Generation Festival in New Jersey at the beginning of the month.  This was our first year at RevGen and it was our first event in New Jersey.  The team was able to spread the word about The Love Alliance and the issues we represent to an entirely new group of people.

David traveled to Awakening Festival in Leesburg, VA, at the end of the month.  Two fantastic volunteers including Carolyn who is a student in the DC area and Owen Jones who is the TLA Alexandria, VA Group Leader joined him.  This was our first year at this festival as well and our first event in Virginia.  Even though it rained all day it was still a great event and we were able to hand out a lot of fliers and talk with countless people.  

LAST MONTH - ACTION PROJECT

Last month was our 3rd Annual Love Alliance Fall Cleaning.  Historically, this has been one of our most successful action projects.  By cleaning your house and getting rid of items you no longer use, you are making a huge impact on someone else’s life.  We are still receiving totals from our groups as to how much they collected.  If you participated in last month’s project and weighed everything you gave away, please email us at Action@thelovealliance.net and let us know.  

THIS MONTH - HAPPENINGS

The Love Alliance is sponsoring our good friends Straylight Run’s Fall Tour called the “The Mile After Mile Tour.”  The tour starts October 7th in Aurora, Illinois, and will end November 8th in NYC.  The supporting bands on the first leg of the tour include Lydia, Anarbor, and Camera Can’t Lie and the bands on the second leg include The Dangerous Summer, Mansions, Moving Mountains, Brian Bonz and Dave Melillo.  For more information and to see if the tour will hit your town check out Straylight Run’s website at www.straylightrun.com .

It is always great when we get updates from our Love Alliance groups.  This past month we heard from Eli Figueroa, TLA Trinity, FL Group Leader.  This is what he had to say, “To this date, we've raised over $8,000 since becoming a group and have donated $4,000 to Compassion International.  We have collected hundreds and hundreds of clothing items that we have donated to various homeless shelters and personally passed out to the streets (our TLA outreach team).  We bought $2,000 worth of pre-stuffed backpacks through Somebody Cares Tampa Bay and threw a huge back to school bash and blessed many underprivileged students with school supplies. The remaining money, we used to buy food and supplies for various organizations who take care of the homeless in Pinellas, Pasco, and Hillsborough County.”  Very encouraging to hear and to know that such a small group of people had such a huge impact on their community and other communities worldwide.  If you would like to make a difference in your community and beyond and would like to start a Love Alliance Group please fill out a group application on our website here.

We want to hear from you about what topics you want to get involved with and more specifically what type of Action Projects you would like to see from The Love Alliance.  Two of our most successful projects were ideas from supporters, Raising Money for Mosquito Nets in July ’08 and our School Supplies Drive in August of ’08 and ’09.  What ideas do you have?  Please email us at action@thelovealliance.net and maybe you will see your idea as an Action Project in the coming months.  

THIS MONTH - ACTION PROJECT

If you have been with The Love Alliance for more than a year than you would know that October is Fair Trade Month.  Therefore we are once again focusing on Fair Trade.  This month we are asking you to educate as many people about Fair Trade as possible.  You can do this a lot of different ways.  First off, we have posted a blog entry on our website that talks about all things fair trade, you can increase your knowledge about fair trade and share the blog with others.  Click here to read it.  

Being online gives us the ability to educate mass amounts of people quickly and with little effort.  Post updates on your Facebook/Twitter/Myspace.  Here are some examples:

October is Fair Trade Month.  Learn more here: http://bit.ly/3wnWN

I don’t take slavery in my coffee. http://bit.ly/3wnWN

I take my chocolate slave-free. http://bit.ly/3wnWN

If you are posting on Twitter, use the hashtag #fairtrade to help Fair Trade become a trending topic and encourage your friends to Repost.  

Tell your friends, family and co-workers about Fair Trade.  Encourage them to look for fair trade alternatives this month. 

Educate the general public.  Buy “Remember the Poor” and “Remember the Enslaved” products in our webstore and tell people about Fair Trade when asked.  You can also buy “Remember the Poor” and “Remember the Enslaved” flyer cards in our webstore to hand out.