WHY DONATE TO THE REBOZO WAY PROJECT?
RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND OUR NEEDS
November 2006

Our website, http://www.rebozoway.org, is the heart of our organization. Our focus is "Honoring the wisdom of ancient ways and diverse cultures, indigenous babywearing and traditional birthing lore." We have now been working at this for the last eighteen years, since 1988, and we incorporated as a federal non profit in 2004. At that time we also let go of selling rebozos, so that we can concentrate more fully on our educational purpose. As our information brochure so clearly states, "Our work is done alongside a growing number of individuals and organizations who are also dedicated to promoting in-arms parenting styles in an effort to move cultural trends toward nurturing and cooperation. The Rebozo Way's unique contribution is educating through art, images, and stories from cultures that successfully practice in-arms parenting in our modern world."
Check our the whole brochure at http://www.rebozoway.org/articles/brochure/brochure.pdf
Also, happy news! This year we saw the translation of our info brochure into Spanish! This is available at http://www.rebozoway.org/espanol/folletoespanolweb.pdf

Before I get into some of our other accomplishments over the last couple of years, here's how you can donate online.

To send an online donation, through Paypal, click on our donation form at http://www.rebozoway.org/secure/donation.html and then the Paypal donate button, or just use the donate button here:

Alternately, you may use our website and donate through our webstore and secure online order form. Although we don't have a specific category yet for donations, you can go to the Visual Materials page, click on ordering a RWP video/DVD
and then go to checkout and fill out your data and credit card info
as requested (It's all very secure). Then, in the Comments box, just
say something like, "Hi Barbara, what I really want to do is
make a donation for $___ instead of (or in addition to) getting the
DVD". I am the one who gets the orders from the webstore, and
I will make the adjustment--I'll charge your card for the amount donated,
and delete any automatically calculated shipping charges too. Then
I'll email you and let you know that your card will be charged the
amount that you donated.

Also, if you donate more than $200 (or at
your request), we'll send you an official donation receipt.

You may also send a check or money order to:
The Rebozo Way Project
P.O. BOX 22506
Santa Barbara, CA 93121 U.S.A.
Please make checks payable to The Rebozo Way Project

As always, we need funds to pay ongoing needs, for example, website
costs, including hosting, domain names, merchant services, internet
service provider, email services, virus protection, and so on. We
need to pay for our PO Box, computer costs such as print cartridges
and paper, office expenses, and printing costs of our brochures and
booklets. Our main office computer is now six years old, and in the
near future we will need to upgrade. For more ideas about where to
direct your donation to The Rebozo Way Project, please go to: http://www.rebozoway.org/admin/wishlist.htm
We will use the money where it is most needed, or you can include
instructions about where your donation should be earmarked. I would
also be happy to talk to you more about our vision and how we want
and need to use donations.

OK, back to accomplishments; just so you know.
We finally have some statistics compiled from 2005; here they are:

a. Our website, http://www.rebozoway.org, is the heart of our organization.
It is a complex labyrinth of information and photos as well as a resource for accessing educational materials or opportunities about our mission.
In 2005, we received a total of 681,790 hits on the site, with 146,290
pageviews. Our average monthly usage for the website was 56,815 hits, with 12,190 pageviews.

b. We offer free consultations and information sharing related to our mission via email, and over the course of 2005, we answered approximately 235 emails requesting information related to our mission, not counting inquiries into the
REP Program (see below) or orders for educational materials. Perhaps 20% of these mails required up to an hour to answer, although the average time spent on responding to any one email was about 15 minutes. We directed people to specific pages on our site as well as attached photos or information to use in educating others about our mission.

c. We continue to offer
educational materials including books, booklets, videos, and DVDs
that share information related to our mission. These are available
through our webstore and also at conferences and workshops we attend.

d. In 2005 we established
the REP (Rebozo Way Educator of Parenting Practices) program to provide a structure for individuals to use in teaching others about our mission. We received 24 inquires re REPs in 2005, and 17 of them downloaded or received our educational and support materials. Estimated minimum number of persons benefited during this first year of operation: 240.

e. We expanded services to Spanish language audiences through our website, by translating and adding a variety of educational articles related to our mission.
Site use by Spanish language audience increased from an average of
6-7% of monthly usage (300 hits/day) in 2004 to 15-18% (800 hits/day)
in 2005. All translations were in-kind donations and no cost was charged to The Rebozo Way Project. See http://www.rebozoway.org/articles/articles.htm#espanol

f. Our Photo Show: Indigenous Babywearing in Latin America
was exhibited for 30 days in September 2005, part of a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration, at the Fort Worth, TX Public Library. The show was viewed by approximately 2000 people.

g. We collaborated with Pueblo to Pueblo, an organization that offers medical services to indigenous Guatemalans in the town of Santiago Atitlan, by providing
many of the photos that they used in their information brochure.

And we've done all this working on a shoestring budget! Imagine what we could do with more robust funding!

Now, just briefly, some of the highlights in 2006 (sorry, no statistics yet)

As mentioned before, we have translated our information brochure into Spanish. We also now have a Latin America representative for the project in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Her name is Lupita Gonzalez.<br>
Next step: setting up a separate, mirror website in Spanish.

Our Photo Show was exhibited
at the International Babywearing Conference in Portland, OR in August
2006, and I taught or co-facilitated eight workshops or presentations
there. It was an amazing event, please see their website
for more info; you can also read my account of the conference

We did re-edit our educational video, trimming some of it to make it more professional, and adding footage showing demos of most of the Easy as 1-2-3 Rebozo Wraps as well as a wonderful baby back wrap with knot at the waist. We are also now able to offer it in DVD format. Still not completely satisfied with this version, which has some audio glitches, we are offering it as a Transitional Re-edit in the hope that we will be able to re-edit the re-edit in the next year or two. We are thrilled to have done this edting on the presentversion, though, since we had been trying to get this done for the last 6 or more years, and we finally started it! Plus, we feel it has
more to offer than the original. Our dependence on volunteer editors
and others' equipment could be remedied by more donations earmarked
for this cause, especially the simple tax-deductive donation of an older (at least a G3 or G4) Mac desktop computer.

We expanded our selection of educational books to include three important new titles, Connection Parenting by Pam Leo, Original Wisdom by Robert Wolff, and Other Ways of Knowing by John Broomfield. Check them out at our webstore; then click on Books and Booklets.

We also refined our newly established REP program to offer a package of educational materials, including publicity ideas, plus our DVD, for a minimal fee, to all new REPs. Next step: create a variety of REP packages for different fees, adding selected books and visual materials to each one, depending on the focus of the package.

We have also focused this
year on becoming more known in our local area, and have reached out
to like-minded parents and professionals in Santa Barbara.
Next steps: make some local public presentations about The Rebozo
Way Project, collaborate more fully with local groups and individuals,
and find folks who want to join the Project and to be active Board
members, both locally and globally.

Thanks for your interest and support.

barbara wishingrad, founder and President