WHY DONATE TO THE REBOZO WAY PROJECT?
RECENT ACCOMPLISHMENTS AND OUR NEEDS
November 2007

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

Before I get into some of our other accomplishments over the last year, 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:

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

This year, 2007, we contributed our educational materials and photos of traditional babywearers to a variety of locales and venues, including the Summer Sling Show in London, England in July, the Portland Baby Expo in September, and the Nashville Birth Network public meeting in November. We were also invited to participate in the Festival de Rebozo in Arandas, Jalisco that took place in September, and provided educational materials to Rainbow Child, Inc.
We provided photos and other resources for the websites of other babywearing advocacy groups, including Carry Me Close of Canada. We also put many of the images from our photography show into an online slide show in November. We have linked to the slide show from our homepage. http://www.slide.com/r/8mUybTV6T_0sgyWR9eZl5lHIJG4U75R?previous_view=lt_embedded_url
We have also been busy preparing for the International Babywearing Conference in Chicago in June 2008. http://www.babywearingconference.com/ We are coordinating and will participate in the panel on the History of Babywearing, will co-teach a class on how to use a rebozo and other traditional SPOCs (simple pieces of cloth) to carry babies, and will have a booth in the exhibition hall, where we will share our educational materials, including a fifteen-month calendar of traditional babywearers and our growing collection of babywearing dolls from around the world. We have recently started to solicit photos of babywearers from around the world for the calendar project, which will also be a fundraiser for the Rebozo Way.
The year started with some good press for the Project, as we were sited in Mothering Magazine's special issue on babywearing which came out in January. Our President, Barbara Wishingrad, was a guest on The Family Hour, a radio show on KGGV LP in Guerneville, CA, on January 19, speaking about the importance of keeping babies in arms. We were also interviewed for and featured in a piece in HOY: Fin de Semana, a Spanish language weekend magazine/insert that is distributed across the U.S. That article appeared in the September 20th and 21st issue, coordinated to appear around the time of the Mexican Fiestas Patrias.
The Rebozo Way Project had our first local (Santa Barbara, CA) fundraiser in May, when we screened the film The Motherhood Manifesto at our downtown library. Although we just ended up breaking even after costs of putting on the event, we did learn from the experience and get to show this important information to the local community. The film, among other things, addresses the governmental and business policies that have inhibited good attachment and bonding between mothers and children in this culture, and ways that this can be remedied.
We continued to promote The Rebozo Way of Life through our website http://www.rebozoway.org, email correspondence with a variety of people, and welcoming new REPs into our organization. A REP is a Rebozo Way Educator of Parenting Practices See http://www.rebozoway.org/projects/REPP.html for guidelines.
The Art of Rebozo Making article was remade into a PDF format which is now on our website http://www.rebozoway.org/articles/artreboz.htm and is available to be downloaded and printed if so desired.
We have expanded and enhanced our Spanish language website and have created a homepage and a more complete look to our Spanish information at http://www.rebozoway.org/espanol/indespanol.htm . We have continued to add new articles and links, and to make new alliances with babywearing advocates in the Spanish speaking world. Our collaborators in Mexico have produced two new brochures about The Rebozo Way of Life this year.
The Rebozo Way Project is proud to announce that we have organized our first Advisory Board. It is comprised of eight members from a variety of backgrounds, with many talents. Our board members are listed at http://www.rebozoway.org/admin/contribs.htm
We also welcomed a new member to our Board of Trustees this year, Vesta Garcia, of Ellaroo Babywearing Designs http://ellaroo.com/ Vesta has been involved in promoting babywearing for many years, and has a special interest in traditional babywearing. Vesta has investigated and collected baby carriers from many indigenous cultures and has worked to adapt many of them to the needs of those in our culture.

As to our needs:
We have set a goal to redo our Rebozo Way DVD this year, and are asking donors to earmark funds for this project as a first priority. We also need money to print our fifteen-month calendar of photos of traditional babywearers around the world, which we will offer for sale for the first time at the International Babywearing Conference in Chicago in June.
And, 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. 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.

Thanks for your interest and support.

barbara wishingrad, founder and President