A lot of people don’t know that Elon Musk has a brother, but I have long been team Kimball. He has a garden classroom nonprofit called Big Green. I’ve been waiting for them to open up funding to programs outside of school and they DID!

I applied for a grant in July – the application process was a series of written responses, group calls, training etc and on October 1st Make Our Day received $10,000 to build a garden classroom!

The things we will do with this money in order of priority are:

• Add electric, plumbing, and insulation to the classroom (it’s 20 x 20 a PALACE!)
• Buy a Tower Garden (https://www.towergarden.com/school-gardens)
• Till, fertilize and plant a new, much larger outdoor garden
• If we have money left after that we need kitchen appliances – large refrigerator, ovens, grill, transformer table, and pour concrete for front and back patios to expand the classroom space and move cooking outside when possible.

We have already started making moves on the first 3 items and will get as much done as I can before winter. I am going to Thailand around Thanksgiving. I will come back and pick back up working on the classroom and planting the new garden in March. Missouri Make Our Day classes will resume in May 2023.

Next Item of Business – It’s Sober October!

There’s still time to join or nominate people. Although my body feels like it’s been weeks, it has in fact only been 2 days, so you can still join.

Why Sober October?

Sober October is a huge fundraising event in the UK (https://www.gosober.org.uk/) and Australia (Ocsober for LifeEd). It’s mainly gained notoriety in the US from Joe Rogan as a fitness challenge.

In the UK and Australia, people ask friends and family to sponsor them by making a donation to their fundraiser page. There is no fitness challenge component to it.

In the US it’s a fitness challenge, no charity component to it.

I wanted to bring the two together by doing something fun that includes the great American pastimes of peer pressure and shit talking. So here’s what I’ve come up with: 

1. Nominate friends to join Sober October by text, email, social media tag.
2. That friend has to either:

• Join the challenge – which means they go sober and donate $1 a day. Adding the fitness component is optional.
• Decline the challenge – BUT in order to pass and keep their booze for the month of October – they have to buy their way out of going sober by making a donation in the amount of their last bar tab or liquor store bill.

Coming 2023 – Once you join – get together with your friends to create a team on our Make Our Day Sober October app to track days sober, workouts, talk shit, make side bets, come up with prizes or cheats etc. There are 5 of us in the “beta test” right now – JOIN!

I’m really excited about this and I think it has the potential to become a huge annual fundraiser for us. It’s fun, it’s in the zeitgeist and it’s also going to force me and the coding team to learn how to make an app – so it will also be educational.

Here’s a video of what I’ve got so far (it’s not really an app yet – it’s a form that looks like an app, linked to a homepage icon – but we’ve begun!)

Thank you so much for all of your support this year! If you want to get further involved with Make Our Day as a volunteer or donor there are more ways than ever for you to help. You can volunteer time fixing up the classroom, donate snacks and groceries for classes, set up student scholarships, or help us source larger items like kitchen appliances.

Email Katie at info@makeourday.org and GO NOMINATE SOMEONE TO JOIN SOBER OCTOBER by sending them this link: https://form.jotform.com/Dillman_Kathryn/soberoctober

or tagging them on social!