Off to a Running Start (updated with photos)

Georgia Little Shield is incredible. A couple of days after the closing she conducted a training session for domestic violence advocates. Wow.

Additionally, a woman already is using the shelter - she and her teenage daughter needed to get out of their house, and even though the security system hasn't been installed, as long as the house had a lock, they wanted to stay there.

Georgia getting the keys to the house:



Jackie Brown Otter at the new shelter:



Using the kitchen:



Diane, an advocate at Pretty Bird Woman House:



Mary, a board member of a sister shelter:


There is some good news on the furniture as well. A nearby reservation recently renovated the hotel attached to its casino, and donated furniture to Standing Rock, including a number of entertainment centers, chairs, tables, and nightstands. The Tribal Council then distributed them among the service organizations on the reservation. The shelter now has an entertainment center for the living room and the basement, nightstands and those entertainment centers for some of not all of the bedrooms, and chairs and tables for the kitchen and living room. This means that right now, the mom's beds are set up with nightstands and the equivalent of dressers, and all they need are more bunk beds, as well as blankets for full and twin size beds (since I neglected to mention the need for blankets, most people have been sending only sheets and towels. So, now I'll say it, the shelter still needs blankets and pillows).

The money from the current ChipIn will go to buy whatever the shelter is lacking for the house after the material donations slow down. They will probably need a sleeper sofa (in case of overload, an extra bed always comes in handy), but if they haven't gotten the bunk beds yet, they'll probably use it to buy them, since bunk beds are the only things they really don't have enough of right now.

In other news, the original estimate the shelter was given for a security system turned out to be the Cadillac, wireless version. Getting a wired version and doing some hard bargaining got the price down to a reasonable $12,000 (that first estimate was surely wishful thinking on the part of the security company). The fence is set to cost about $7,000, so that still brings it up to $19,000, a significant part of the money we collected for the house fund, so it was good that we went over goal.

Thank you again all you generous donors. You are making a huge difference in the lives of hundreds of women and children.