The Importance of Voting

As most of you know Trips for Kids Southern Arizona is attempting to win the Chase Community Giving program through Facebook. For those of you who have voted I thank you for taking the time to vote and support this wonderful cause. As it stands we currently have 40 votes for our charity. While this is a good start we really need all of our fans to vote and ask others to vote as well if we intended to get into the top 100 and receive at least a $25,000 grant. This money could make a significant impact on this all volunteer organization as it amounts to more than a year of our current budget. With this money we could expand and better maintain our fleet bikes allowing us to serve more kids. Beyond the nuts and bolts of this I would like to take the time to outline what supporting our organization means and what you can do by simply taking 5 minutes to vote.

While giving thanks for what I have this past holiday, I realized that even in down times like these I have a lot to be thankful for and I suspect that many of you do as well. When I compare this to the lives of the children that we serve the decision to vote becomes simple. A vote for us is a vote to give a child an hour or two of the life that we get to experience every day. It provides them with a chance to get away from the fighting in their homes, to be away from the dangers of gang life, to not worry about where they might sleep next week. In short, you give them the chance to be a kid and experience the joy of the outdoors on a bike. These memories and experiences can be very powerful to those who do not normally have them. I am reminded of an experience I had when working with youth while at a domestic violence shelter. One day I decided to turn our playground structure into a pirate ship with a treasure hunt for the preschoolers in our daycare. While it was only there for one day it made a profound effect on at least on child. A couple of years later one of the mothers of the children that attended that day, who unfortunately did not have the child at that time, came up to me and said that her child still made their bed and coach into a pirate ship and would talk about that day. Those hours of work setting it up and almost setting my roommates kitchen on fire making maps had payed off. That child had a memory that they could hold on to in hard times, a piece of normally and joy in their world.

In our first year of service I can already see how Trips for Kids Southern Az is helping to create these same types of memories. I can imagine the kids talking about how exciting it was to do that jump, how good it felt to hear a group of people cheer them on as they climbed that hill that they did not think they could climb but did. I can hear it in the voices of children as they ask to go on just one more lap. So I ask you to help us build those memories and take 5 minutes to vote and give our kids a taste of the life that we all get to live every day. Below are instructions to vote. Thank you.

Shawn Rudnick Board Member

• Go to Trips for Kids Southern AZ Fan page and find the blue hand with link to our page
• Become a fan of Chase community giving
• Vote for us and other great organizations like our partners
• Invite your friends using one of the 3 links on the bottom right of the page below the comments section