SIX down !!

This has been an absolutely wonderful week !! Way back in October, when there were 171 children with zero in their accounts, my dream seemed impossible. How on earth were we going to manage to zero the zeros - get money into the accounts of all 171 children ? Children who never seem to get a second glance, children who are older, not so cute, that have been passed over so many times. I definitely thought I'd taken on something that would take forever. However, slowly but surely, it happened. One by one, week by week, those grants started to get money in them. Two days ago, there were just 71 children left with zero - meaning that we had managed to get a little bit of cash into 100 accounts !!! Wow !! How about that for a breakthrough !! Could it possibly get any better ? Well - actually - yes. It could.

A few months ago, I asked the help of a fellow advocate. Actually, she's the reason I am doing this. Julia and her husband Rob adopted a little boy, Aaron, from an institute in 2010. I started to follow her blog, and reading her descriptions of the institute and the "Lost Boys" ripped my heart out. I fell in love with this little guy - Heath.

I long for the day he finds a family - I just know they're out there somewhere, waiting for him. Anyhow, I digress. Back to Julia - she promised she would write a blog post to help zero the zeros. At the time, she was busy busy busy and was instrumental in helping many many children reach their Angel Tree goal. She is a tireless advocate for the children of Reece's Rainbow. Yesterday, she wrote the promised blog post - you can find it here. I think you'll agree that she definitely has a way with words :) She also has many more followers than me - I don't know who they are, but they are an army of wonderful people !! When she wrote her post, there were still 71 zeros. As of 4pm this afternoon, thanks to Julia's Army, there are only 28 zeros left !!!!!!!! In one day, 43 children had money put into their accounts. Absolutely amazing.

Listed below are the ten categories of listings for the older children on Reece's Rainbow. As you can see, out of 10 categories, SIX categories have zeroed the zeros. Let's see if we can make that ten, shall we ?

Down Syndrome Boys age 6-9 with zero in their account - ZERO !
Down Syndrome Girls age 6-9 with zero in their account - ZERO !
Other Angel Boys age 6-9 with zero in their accounts - Erik, Walter, Terry, Dmitri, Gary, Andrew, Arthur, Caesar
Other Angel Girls age 6-9 with zero in their accounts - Brittany, Elise, Olive, Erin, Patti, Leila, Noel, Alisha, Ginger, Linda, Judie, Leesa, Allie.
HIV Boys/Girls age 6-9 with zero in their accounts - Jenny & Jordan, Yelena
Down Syndrome Boys age 10+ with zero in their accounts - ZERO !
Down Syndrome Girls age 10+ with zero in their accounts - Margit, Dawn, Lynette, Emilija, Natalija
Other Angel Boys age 10+ with zero in their accounts - ZERO !
Other Angel Girls age 10+ with zero in their accounts - ZERO !
HIV Boys/Girls age 10+ with zero in their accounts - ZERO !