Raising money.

Friday, I opened up a special account with my bank, it is under the auspices of the Bedlam Farm name, as required by new banking laws, but it is the Sakler Moo Educational Fund and it is separate.

I put a few hundred dollars in there and am accepting donations all year for the $6,000 I will need to pay the balance of his tuition at the Albany Academy after Sakler’s scholarship contribution from the school.

The Albany Academy is a very fine, nationally known private school, a perfect place for Salker, it will open up some doors for him that will shape the rest of his life.

Last week did make me nervous. I took over tuition payments for Sakler’s mother, Lae Pwy, she will try to raise the money- her share is $2,000 – but it will be a lot harder for her than for me, or so I believe. In addition, we had to come up with more than $2,000 to repair the brakes on Ali’s big Red Van, the soccer team’s lifeline and means to independence.

So all told, I wrote $8,000 in checks, way more than ever.

This week, I would like to pay for about $700 in new clothes so that the refugee team players going to high school for the first time will have the right clothes to avoid the inevitable ridicule and judgement of their new American peers who value clothes highly.

it is important to them.

Before the tuition fund and van contributions, I had raised about some money for the clothes, which we need to buy this week.  I don’t have a total, things moved quickly last week.

The expenditures last week blew my fund and my plans up and I am scrambling and re-organizing.

So okay, I do need some help.

Last week was unusual, a record for expenditures to the refugee fund, and I have a year to raise the tuition money for Sakler for 2019 although I will start saving now. I always try to keep at least $2,000 in the refugee fund, after all these tuition checks clear this week, I’ll have about $800 or $900, and I am uneasy spending $700 of that.

For the first time, the soccer players are nervous about being photographed, they don’t want their classmates to see them buying new clothes or having someone buy them for them, and I completely understand that.

But I have also explained to them that I have an absolutely rigid rule about raising money. I don’t raise money for anyone I can’t photograph, the people who send me money are entitled to see where the money is going and what for.

That is the foundation of the work with the Army of Good, the source of faith and trust, and I have never violated it unless it was simply impossible. I’ve been struggling with Muslim women all year to get them to agree to being photographed, and i don’t like doing it, but it is non-negotiable. As a reporter, I didn’t mind pressuring people to talk to me, or have their picture taken,  now I’d rather not.

But this is what has worked for me, for us.

My plan is to raise some money for the clothes – I’ll make up the short fall if there is one –  and I will take a photo of the boys (or girls) from a distance, and perhaps in silhouette. I had a teenaged daughter, I remember what that phase of life was like.

I will not use their names or show recognizable faces, I know how to do that.

But images are the basis for this work as well as words, and I can’t  and won’t compromise.

I also feel they ought to know that the money that supports them is hard fought, I can’t make it and don’t have it. It comes from people who expect and deserve transparency, and I won’t abandon that, even for the sensibilities of teenagers.

I’ll protect their privacy.

It seems like a fair compromise to me, these kids are wonderful and have never before balked at being photographed, so I know its an important issue for them, and I want to respect it. I also want them to respect the effort that goes into receiving money from a lot of people, few if any of whom are wealthy.

If  you can or wish to help this week, you can send a contribution to my post office box in my name (as now required by law), Jon Katz. P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or via Paypal, [email protected]. Please mark any check or payment either to “Sakler Moo Fund,” or to “soccer team clothes.”

All the money will go where it’s supposed to go, we have no adminstrative costs other than gasoline, and the accounts area audited monthly by a bookkeeper and a New York City accounting firm. Thanks. We won’t have too many weeks like this, I want to get thing back in order.