CAYA's Warm Blanket and Coat Drive 2013 - December Reminder

Happy Month of Solstice!

As the days get colder and the hours of darkness get longer, the warmth of generosity and the light of friendship become ever more precious.  In the spirit of sharing CAYA’s wealth of generosity and friendship with our wider community, the CAYA Public Service Track is organizing a Warm Blanket and Coat Drive for this season.  

At our rituals for December*, we will be happy to collect donations of warm coats, blankets (and also hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, and sweaters), as well as cash donations towards providing warmth to our neighbours in the East Bay Area.  

We will be donating the items and the money we collect to East Oakland Community Project’s Crossroads Emergency Shelter, a place where all are treated with respect and dignity, where sustainable use of resources is practiced, and where scarcity can be transformed into abundance.  http://www.eocp.net/what-we-do/crossroads

Last year’s drive was a great success, and Crystal Blanton of the Pagan Newswire Collective wrote this great article about the CAYA Public Service Track’s projects for 2012:

http://bayarea.pagannewswirecollective.com/2012/11/22/caya-winter-blanket-and-coat-drive

I am so grateful for this community!  Together, we can steer the world gently towards a more loving, more respectful, more sustainable future!

Thankfully,

Molly Blue Dawn

*Saturday, December 14, Grove of Artemis and Brotherhood of the Moon

celebrate the Giving Moon

Friday, December 20, Bloodroot Honey Priestess Solstice of the Goddess Rising

Saturday, December 21, CAYA Solstice of Eternal Renewal.

CAYA's Warm Blanket and Coat Drive 2013

Happy Month of Thanksgiving!

As the days get colder and the hours of darkness get longer, the warmth of generosity and the light of friendship become ever more precious.  In the spirit of sharing CAYA’s wealth of generosity and friendship with our wider community, the CAYA Public Service Track is organizing a Warm Blanket and Coat Drive for this season.  

At our rituals for November and December*, we will be happy to collect donations of warm coats, blankets (and also hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, and sweaters), as well as cash donations towards providing warmth to our neighbours in the East Bay area.  

We will be donating the items and the money we collect to East Oakland Community Project’s Crossroads Emergency Shelter, a place where all are treated with respect and dignity, where sustainable use of resources is practiced, and where scarcity can be transformed into abundance.  http://www.eocp.net/what-we-do/crossroads

Last year’s drive was a great success, and Crystal Blanton of the Pagan Newswire Collective wrote this great article about the CAYA Public Service Track’s projects for 2012:

http://bayarea.pagannewswirecollective.com/2012/11/22/caya-winter-blanket-and-coat-drive

I am so grateful for this community!  Together, we can steer the world gently towards a more loving, more respectful, more sustainable future!

Thankfully,

Molly Blue Dawn

*Saturday, November 16, Grove of Artemis and Brotherhood of the Moon

celebrate the Graveyard Moon

Saturday, December 14, Grove of Artemis and Brotherhood of the Moon

celebrate the Giving Moon

Friday, December 20, Bloodroot Honey Priestess Solstice of the Goddess Rising

Saturday, December 21, CAYA Solstice of Eternal Renewal.

CAYA Public Service Day at the Food Bank

On Saturday, September 14, the team of volunteers organized by the CAYA Public Service Track worked a three-hour shift at the Alameda County Community Food Bank.

http://www.accfb.org

The Food Bank buys produce in bulk from local farmers, and we were put to work bagging apples.  Big apples, small apples, apples of various shapes and shades - but not rotten apples.  Those, we pulled out and tossed into the compost bin, where they will feed the soil which will grow more beautiful produce!  A Pagan elbow-deep in sacred apples is a happy Pagan!  We never forgot that each one of those apples had a pentacle at its center.

I was joined by Amata Maia Mermaid, Tia, and aspirants Chase and Vicki.  We made a beautiful team! Vicki has posted some pictures:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/116903122211335839612/albums/5928092742771825441

Our team got through about three bins - several thousand pounds - of apples, and the combined work of the many teams working that shift bagged a really impressive amount of food!  

Apples!  Teamwork!  Feeding our community!  That’s my idea of a good time!  For a good time, you can join our team next year!  The more, the merrier - and the more productive!

The Food Bank always appreciates the donations of non-perishable food which tend to flood in during the Harvest season and at Yule, but Summer is the season when they don’t get as much attention, so in September, their store of food donations was very small.  However, the type of donation which the Food Bank can put to the best use is in the form of money.  Because they buy in bulk, a few dollars donated to the Food Bank buys a lot more food than it would at the store.  

This year, as part of our Autumn Public Service Project, CAYA’s Public Service Track decided to maximize our potential impact by providing all three types of donations - food, volunteer labor, and money.  We collected and blessed donations of food at our Festival of Heart and Harvest, we worked our shift at the Food Bank, and we are still raising money through our Virtual Food Drive.  

On the CAYA Virtual Food Drive Page, you can “go shopping” and choose what will be bought with your donation of money, or you can choose any amount you wish to donate.  Through the magic of bulk purchasing, every dollar donated this way transforms into $4 worth of food!

CAYA’s Virtual Food Drive page:

https://www.vfd-accfb.org/grouphome.aspx?ID=703

Please share this link on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and anywhere else where magically generous people can be found!

CAYA’s Virtual Food Drive is still running through the end of September, so please take the chance to contribute what you can in the next few days!

Abundant and Generous Blessings,

Molly Blue Dawn

Join the CAYA Team for our Volunteering Day and our Virtual Food Drive!

Share the Abundance of the Harvest Season with Come As You Are Coven!

CAYA Public Service Day at Alameda County Community Food Bank

Saturday, September 14, 1:00-4:00PM

Alameda County Community Food Bank, 7900 Edgewater Drive, Oakland

Please RSVP to Molly Blue Dawn at mollmac@gmail.com

http://www.accfb.org

CAYA’s Public Service Project for Autumn 2013 will include an afternoon shift helping out at the Alameda County Community Food Bank.  In the spirit of gratitude for and eagerness to share our abundance during the harvest season, we will help to sort and pack donated produce to be distributed to those in need of extra nourishment this year.  Please join us!

If you would like to join our team, please contact me at mollmac@gmail.com.

CAYA is also doing a Virtual Food Drive!

The Alameda County Community Food Bank has has gratefully received CAYA’s donations of canned food gathered and blessed at our Festival of Heart and Harvest.  An even better way to support the Food Bank is through our Virtual Food Drive.  The blessings of Heart and Harvest will also extend to our virtual donations, and will multiply them four-fold!

On the CAYA Virtual Food Drive Page, you can “go shopping” and choose what will be bought with your donation of money, or you can choose any amount you wish to donate.  Through the magic of bulk purchasing, every dollar donated this way transforms into $4 worth of food!

CAYA’s Virtual Food Drive page:

https://www.vfd-accfb.org/grouphome.aspx?ID=703

Please share this link on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and anywhere else where magically generous people can be found!

CAYA’s Virtual Food Drive will be running through the end of September, so whenever you have some extra abundance to share this Autumn, please “go shopping” with CAYA and help us to reach our goal of $500 - which will, of course, buy $2,000 worth of food for those in need of extra abundance this season!

Abundant Blessings of the Season,

Molly Blue Dawn

http://cayacoven.org

Thank You for helping to make CAYA's Warm Coat and Blanket Drive a rousing success!

At our rituals this past November and December, CAYA collected warm coats, blankets, and other items to be donated to East Oakland Community Project’s Crossroads Emergency Shelter.  http://www.eocp.net/what-we-do/crossroads

Crystal Blanton helped to publicize our effort on the Pagan Newswire Collective:
http://bayarea.pagannewswirecollective.com/2012/11/22/caya-winter-blanket-and-coat-drive

Last Tuesday, several CAYA Clergy members and Wildflower Initiates met at Yeshe Rabbit’s house to sort the donations.  We found that we had collected 17 bags of donated items!

Yesterday, I took the two carloads of donated items to the Crossroads Emergency Shelter, where the staff were happy to receive the coats, blankets, sheets, pillows, clothing and toys from our community.  The CAYA Community’s presence, good will, and warmth was felt in our larger local community, to the mutual benefit of everyone involved!

My thanks and congratulations to all those who helped with this effort - To those who spread the word about the drive, those who donated items, those who blessed them at our rituals, those who brought them home from rituals and stored them, those who helped to get them sorted into bags and boxes, and delivered to the place where they will serve the highest good of the community.  

Gratefully,

Molly Blue Dawn

CAYA's Warm Blanket and Coat Drive 2012

Happy Thanksgiving!

As the days get colder and the hours of darkness get longer, the warmth of generosity and the light of friendship become ever more precious.  In the spirit of sharing CAYA’s wealth of generosity and friendship with our wider community, the CAYA Public Service Track is organizing a Warm Blanket and Coat Drive for this season.  

At our rituals for November and December*, we will be happy to collect donations of warm coats, blankets (and also hats, gloves, mittens, scarves, and sweaters), as well as cash donations towards providing warmth to our neighbours in the East Bay area.  

We will be donating the items and the money we collect to East Oakland Community Project’s Crossroads Emergency Shelter, a place where all are treated with respect and dignity, where sustainable use of resources is practiced, and where scarcity can be transformed into abundance.  http://www.eocp.net/what-we-do/crossroads

I am so grateful for this community!  Together, we can steer the world gently towards a more loving, more respectful, more sustainable future!

Thankfully,

Molly Blue Dawn


*Saturday, November 24, Grove of Artemis and Brotherhood of the Moon,
Friday, December 21, Bloodroot Honey Priestess Solstice of the Goddess Rising,
Saturday, December 22, CAYA Solstice of Eternal Renewal.