Jenean Witherspon's Blog

Raffled Rasied $8,775 for the Campaign!!

Jenean — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:55:18 EDT

On April 8th, the Ravelry Knitters for Obama held a raffle for a Campaign Afghan and 18 other prizes that raised a whopping $8,775 for the Obama Campaign! We are excited and amazed at how people can come together all over the U.S. to raise funds as a collective group for the campaign.

Go HERE to see a picture of the finished afghan.

Here is our press release:

When Grassroots Efforts Come Together

A hundred years ago, the nation’s political landscape included local quilting circles and Red Cross knitting efforts that produced goods to support political and charitable causes. Today, instead of gathering in a home on the town square, artistic-minded activists are harkening back to those long-ago days with the most modern of venues: the internet.

Ravelry, a recently-founded website for knitters and crocheters, has encouraged its members to form their own subgroups based on common interests. These wide-ranging groups include a number of communities devoted to political causes. The members of one of those virtual political gatherings, Ravelry Knitters for Barack Obama, decided to turn their knitting skills into political action by creating a fundraiser: a raffle for a knitted afghan to raise money for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

The project started with a “What if… ?” in the early days of January, 2008, quickly became a project involving over a dozen group members who each knitted a segment of the afghan, and has been a successful fundraising campaign for the group of fiber enthusiasts. The group created a my.barackobama.com group and originally set a fundraising goal of $2,000 in the beginning of February, but quickly had to raise that goal: at the time the raffle was held the group had raised over $8,775!

Ravelry Knitters for Obama have proven that distance between participants is no barrier when people wish to gather together for a worthy cause.

For more information on this effort, please email one of the group’s moderators at obamaknitters@gmail.com.

Afghan Raffle - Over $8,000 and counting!

Jenean — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:13:37 EDT

In the beginning we - Ravelry Knitters for Obama - thought that a $2,000 goal was almost reachable. Two and a half months later we've raised over $8,000!! My thanks goes out to the 15 knitters who knit strips for the afghan and to the one knitter who pieced all those strips together. In just a few days - April 1st - we will be raffling off this afghan to one lucky person. Could it be you? More photos to come, but click HERE to see a picture of the afghan.

Ravelry Knitters for Obama

Jenean — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:24:26 EST

I belong to the Knitters for Obama group on Ravelry and we're knitting up an afghan which will be raffled off. All proceeds will go to the Obama campaign. I'm excited because this all began as a little "what if?" in the back of my brain just a few weeks ago. Now it's this awesome project which several knitters across the United States are contributing to in order to raise funds for the campaign.

I'm even more excited because regardless of the fact that at this moment my family is going through the worse financial crisis that we've ever gone through, I'm able to still do my part in helping to raise money for a worthy cause. Personally I have not been able to donate more than $10 to the campaign, but through organizing this project I hope that I will help our group raise at least $2000 if not more.

I'm sure that I won't post here often, but I will definitely keep you all updated as to the progress afghan and our fundraising efforts.