Email Synopsis

Hi friends,

If you haven't heard yet, I'm putting together an awesome event to raise money and awareness for Invisible Children. They were the first group that brought the sufferings of the Ugandan people to the American consciousness. Since their beginning in 2003, Invisible Children has been working to helping to free some of more than 30,000 children that have been captured by militia groups and forced into becoming soldiers. Recently, the level violence has been receding, but over 1.5 million people are still living in refugee camps. These camps are ridden with disease and malnutrition, but the refugees are virtually trapped because they lack the resources they would need to return home. Invisible Children continues to help these people by providing schooling and other resources to enable them to return to their villages with their needs met and hope restored.

After hearing about these children, I have been looking for a way to help. This what I came up with: in order to raise money for Invisible Children, I am going to auction off my dreadlocks on eBay! "That's crazy!" you might be saying, and I'd agree with you :-) But crazy or not, it's true. I have been in contact with Invisible Children, and they have shared their enthusiasm about this novel fundraising method. So here's how it's going to work.

- I'm going to put up each of my dreads up on eBay, so there will be 35 individual auctions. I'll be starting the auction on Wednesday, July 16th.
- Then (here's where you come in!!!) donors bid big money on eBay. Once I put the eBay posting up, I'll send you the link.
- If you win a dread, congratulations! By adopting a lock, you can tell me what to do with it: dye it whatever color you want, send me beads/charms to put on it, ... be creative :-)
- On July 25th, I will be going up to Knotty Boy salon up in Vancouver, BC. I have told them about Adopt-a-Lock and they're so excited about it that they're going to dye all my dreads for free! They will dye each dread according to its winner's choice.
- I will then keep my dreads all crazy-colored (1-3 weeks depending on how much is raised, see my blog for details), and then cut them off.
- I will donate 100% of the profits (only subtracting the eBay fees) to Invisible Children.
- Also, the company I'm interning with this summer will match the gift amount 100%. So $1 raised = $2 for Invisible Children.
- Finally, all the auction winners will be emailed an official Adopt-a-Lock adoption certificate including a picture of their adopted dread and a personal thanks by me! Kind of like adopting a star, but way cooler. Come on, there are bazillions of stars and only 35 dreads! But similar to adopting a star, I'm not planning on actually sending my disembodied dreads to the winners. I'm kind of betting that most people won't actually want to be sent one in the first place. But that being said, if you really want your adopted dread, I will be happy to send it your way.

I think that sums up the Adopt-a-Lock campaign fairly well. For more details, please check out my Adopt-a-Lock blog or shoot me an email. I'd love to hear any questions/ideas/comments you might have. Once I get the auction up and running, I'll send out another email. If this email bugged you and you don't want any new messages, let me know and I'll take you off the list. Conversely, if you were sent this message by someone other than me and you want updates, send me an email! I won't send out a ton of messages: probably just one when the auction starts and a summary message when it's all done to tell you how much Adopt-a-Lock raised!

Finally, please forward this to everyone you think would be interested and blog/Digg/Facebook/Twitter my blog!

Thanks,

Brian King