December 15, 2006

Update on Utility Donations

I am going to send my main donations to the Cangleska, Inc. battered women's shelter. Please read the email from Chris below, to see why......

My name is Chris and I publish the Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation website. Thank you for publishing the link to my site so people can donate to support many needy organizations on the reservation. I am not in South Dakota, nor am I Native American, but I am in touch via phone and e-mail with many of the schools and social service type organizations on the reservation. I find out their needs and publish them on my site for people all over the world to send their individual donations directly to the organizations that need them.

I've looked into how donors could send funds to the various utility and propane companies to help out needy families with no success. Because the problem is so pervasive on the reservation and the population is so large, the utility companies would be inundated with requests for such assistance and they would have no fair way of deciding which families would receive the assistance. For this reason they are unable to accept generic donations to help with utilities.

My best solution to this has been to recommend donations for this need to the Cangleska, Inc. battered women's shelter. I believe about 800 women (plus their children) passed through the shelter this year alone and when they leave, Cangleska tries to continue to support them as they can, via their outreach program. I've found the best way to send help with heating expenses is to send donations to Cangleska with the request that they specifically be spent on utilities for families in crisis. Since the shelter staff knows these women first hand, they know who is in need and I trust their ability to disperse donations we send as individuals to these families via the utilities and propane companies. Karen Artichoker, the Director of Cangleska, tells me that it costs anywhere from $200 to $600, depending on the condition of the home, to heat a house for one month. Many of the families are living in $300 trailers that are poorly insulated against the elements and the shelter often accepts families who just cannot stay in their homes due to the cold weather and lack of heat.

If you'd like more information on Cangleska, please check out their website at www.cangleska.org......

Thank you for your support of the people on Pine Ridge Reservation--I really appreciate your generosity and I hope this information is helpful!

Take care and happy holidays.

Chris
Friends of Pine Ridge Reservation

Posted at 3:02 PM   -  Permalink