Dear Donor: Thank you very much for your donation to the Longonot Education Initiative!  We at LEI, along with those we work with in Kenya, greatly appreciate your support. Over the past three weeks, we have experienced a tremendous display of kindness after the story of Omari being attacked with a machete as he defended the Faraja Children’s Home—along with our plea for help—went viral on reddit, followed by Twitter and numerous blogs. To date, your immense generosity—so immense and wonderful we are all still in a bit of disbelief—has reached an astounding total of almost $100,000! We cannot thank you enough. The vast majority came from small, individual donations as you all worked in beautiful humanitarian concert to bring this huge amount of money directly to vulnerable children in Kenya, and we are extremely grateful to each of you. However, we would also like to recognize our largest donor, Weebly.   Our website is run on the Weebly platform, and while we loved it before thisdonation, we do even more now because of the clearly compassionate nature of the human capital behind Weebly.  These are good people and a good organization.  We encourage you to visit their website at www.weebly.com and familiarize yourself with their concept. Almost immediately after we began receiving donations, we were able to improve security at the orphanage—hiring a security guard, adding improved locks, etc.  Now, three weeks later, the needed security wall to protect the previously vulnerable orphanage is completed, and the children are as safe and secure as possible thanks to all of you. To see the finished wall, check out our new reddit post at the following link: reddit update post to /r/AskReddit Our organization and ability to make a difference in Kenya have been sent to new heights by reddit and the online community.  Accordingly, we believe your incredible generosity and support are worth more than just this “thank you” email.  Going forward, we would like you all to continue to have a voice within LEI and to continue to be a part of our growth. We have been racking our brains trying to figure out how we can make that happen, and then we realized we should simply return to how this started and ask reddit: how can we best remain engaged with you and keep you involved in our organization? We are not just talking about financial donation—as money is only one piece of this equation.  We are also talking about ideas, connections, input into the future trajectory of our organization, etc.  If you have any ideas as to how we can further engage the reddit community, please share them within the link below.  In true reddit fashion, we are sure the very best will be most prominent (no, none of us have ever been to the Universal Hilton in LA, and we disavow all knowledge of such a thing). reddit update post to /r/AskReddit Please let us know your thoughts and follow us on Twitter and “Like” our Facebook page (both below) so we can keep you updated on the progress of our projects. Thank you again for your support and encouragement, The LEI Team Twitter: @LongonotEd Facebook: facebook.com/LongonotEducationInitiative Website: longonoteducation.org Email: info@longonoteducation.com sub-reddit: /r/longonoteducation