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.
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