What began as a plan to get the funds to "buy" a dinner with Joss Whedon has become one of our families greatest memories.
A few weeks ago Joss told us he was going to be auctioning off dinner with himself for 5 lucky people, with all proceeds going to his favorite charity EQUALITY NOW.  Our family is not wealthy, but we are all great in the ideas department, so we started brainstorming.  Around this time our 8 year old Cub Scout, Ronan, was really getting interested in earning scouting badges so we came up with the idea of a scout fundraiser for Equality Now. We called Sue over at Equality Now in New York and found that there really wasn't that much literature or formal ideas for fundraisers, so we took one of their annual reports pictures and put that on one side of a 4'6 card and put basically their mission statement on the back and made 400 copies.  We bought a few basic supplies, made homade T-shirts that said "Equality Now" and started out door to to door the first night. We were out for almost 5 hours and left many cards and made about $120.  More importantly we raised much curiousity about Equality Now in many homes.

We started going to business's to get them to donate some prizes or funds they were very generous and ended up donating over 300 dollars worth of prizes so what we started doing is selling tickets for $1 each and each ticket is another chance to win these graet prizes, I will put a list at the end of the contributers and the marvelous prizes.

The next night being Friday we were only able to reach about 30 people and made $40, so Ronan suggested we make a Lemonade Stand.  On Saturday we ran that for 4-5 hours and made another $40.  Our two sons both the 8 yr old and his little brother who is only 6 were out dancing and drawing in customers.

Monday Ronan went to his fathers job and made his own presentation about Equality Now. That is one of the best parts, my sons had barely an inkling about what Charity is, through this experience they have learned so much.  Ronan knows about the lady who is to be "stoned" in Iran, the woman who were raped and killed in Africa just because the boys could do it.  The meeting at Nate's work brought in another $40 (I must add though it is a very serious subject, when Ronan was explaining about Kobra Najeer, he told Nate's Co-worker's there was a lady in Iran about to get "stoned" and everyone there thought he was telling them about someone about to get high, his father quickly explained the true meaning, but there's another grand memory)

Monday we were lucky enough to get into advance preview of Transformers, very good movie and a nice break, but while we were there we came up with the idea of going to stores and maybe the 4th of July festival and getting a booth and talked about writing to the newspaper.

Tues we put all our ideas to work we got permission to set up our stand at Kmart on Thurs and Albertsons on Fri and a Flea market on Sat, we decided to pay the $50 for a booth at the 4rth festival.
We stopped into the local paper and told them our story and they said perhaps someone would get back to us, later that day Britnay called and got the story and to our great surprise the next mornig there was Ronan and all about Equality Now on the front page! Although Joss Whedon is not mentioned by name his part in all of this is mentioned :)
We stayed at that booth from 7am to 3pm the heat in St George this time of year gets up to 116 degrees but all three boys from our oldest who is 16 down to our 6 year old were real troopers handing out free lemonade and getting the word out, we ended up only making $60 but we spoke to people, many of whom were visiting from out of town. 

The newspaper told people where they could find Ronan and his Lemonade stand over the next few days and how our campaign will end in a prize drawing on Saturday.  

Thurs at Kmart we made over $50, had many people come because of the newspaper.
We still have Albertsons where we made another $40.  Our oldest son just turned 16 and got his first real job.  Out of his first paycheck he donated $25 of his own, which brings our total up to $420. 

Our grand total came to $464.66.

Meanwhile Joss's auction started and it immediately got up to over $4,000 a seat.   Go Joss!   Way out of our league.  Our new goal is $500 by Sat when we have the drawing. $500 plus about 50 hours of great, HOT, sacrificing, hours spent together letting people know about this marvelous charity.  None of this would have happened had it not been for Joss Whedon's genius shows and my family's love of watching them together, or without Joss Whedon's passion for such a great cause, if you have not you should go to (Joss Whedon's speech) it's a message Joss gave at an Equality Now dinner it is beyond inspiring. Joss thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Due to numerous requests, and because we are still short of our sons goal, we have decided to add a way for you to make donations online.  Our paypal address is teacherdarling@yahoo.com.  ALL donations will be added to Ronan's total to be presented to Equality Now.  We had hoped to put a Paypal "Make Donations" button on here, but they have funny rules about accepting donations, and we are not actually Equality Now, so we were denied.  Thank you so much for your support and kind words, and to the fine folks at whedonesque who took such an interest.

  PRIZES 4 Drawing

6 Movie passes

5 Sharky's gift certificates

$79 dollar painting framed from Sunset Framers

Rare Sean Maher Serenity inkwords($50)

Soulfire issue 0-6 AUTOGRAPHED!($100)

Lost Season 1 mini Poster ($25)

Angelina Jolie Autograph($20-$150)

Pulse Movie Poster

Aeonflux Movie Poster

Over the Hedge Movie Poster

Natural Body lotion

Gift Card (Bath and Body Works)

Large Pepperoni Pizza (Grub Shak)

$25 gift certificate (Red Rock Dry Cleaners)

$15 golf balls (Zion Golf)

$10 golf cap (Zion Golf)

$68 Candlesticks (Split Rock)

Inkjet Refill color or b/w (Ink Factory)

Life is Good T-shirt (LG)

6-Pack Cooler (Crazy Bob)

3 $10 Gift Certificates (Cell Phone Guy)

Package of Coasters

Bunches of Wingers Coupons

2 Herbal Formulas (Dixie Chiropractic)

2 T-Shirts (Dixie Chiropractic)

The100 yr Lifestyle (Dixie Chiropractic)

1 Dozen Donuts (Daylight Donuts)