Why is Our Director of Marketing Living in Her Car?

Last year I lived in my sister’s mini-van for a week. Why? Good question. I wasn’t technically homeless, I wanted to raise awareness for those who don’t have a choice about living in a car or on the streets. I was miserable! I hated it. It was uncomfortable, stressful, embarrassing and a bunch of other words that mean horrible!! So I decided to do it again this year. No I don’t think it is going to be better, but I believe in the reason why I am doing it. This year my goal is to raise $5,000, during the week I will be living in my car (Nov. 12-16, 2012), to go to care for homeless women and children. AND the awesome thing is, I have found someone who loves Shepherd’s Gate and what we do so much that they want to MATCH the amount I raise up to $5,000!! That means at the end of the week, there could potentially be $10,000 going directly to Shepherd’s Gate, to DIRECTLY help homeless women and children!!!! Ahhhh the thought of that gets me all excited!! And I tend to use lots of exclamation points when I get excited!!!!!!!!! So will you join me in this adventure? Will you help me raise this money and spread the word about all the awesome stuff Shepherd’s Gate is doing on behalf of women and children in crisis? What it boils down to is three ways you can help-

1. Pray. Yep that is the #1 thing you can do to help raise the funding and awareness that needs to be raised.
2. Give. I know that is kind of obvious, but basically it looks like this—I am looking for $24 sponsorships, that is $1 for every hour in a day=$24. I need about 209 people to join with me by giving $24 each, which will equal the $5,000 that needs to be raised to meet the matching challenge. You can give more, you can give less, but whatever you give will be DOUBLED by my generous friend and will make a difference in the lives of homeless women and children!! You can give directly to the cause by clicking on the First Giving- Donate button in the right-hand margin of this blog. You get a tax-receipt and ALL the money raised goes directly to Shepherd’s Gate to care for homeless woman and children.
3. Share the adventure. You can follow along on my website at www.jenharp.com and hit RSS button or sign up to get the updates sent to you via e-mail. You can friend me on Facebook (JenniferHarp), follow me on Twitter (jharp) and share the information and videos that I post or Tweet. PLEASE comment on the posts, Retweet the links, and comment on the videos, even if it is just a simple “super”, all of this will help the SEO, which will help get the word out better online.

Thank you so much!! I can’t wait to see the impact we can make together for homeless women and children!! Jen Harp, Big Girl on a Mission