Hello, dear colleagues - I am back from travels to say a royal and heartfelt thank you to everyone who asked for support from Access Queen and others in our community - the Access Queen "Askers". You shared your dream to come to this year's OSonOS in Halifax, identified your specific resource needs, made your brave requests, and joined us at OSonOS. And in doing so, you enriched us all. (for those of you who have just joined our electronic conversation here on OSLIST, Access Queen is a project for naming, sharing and requesting resources to help people with less resources get to our annual in-person gathering, the Open Space on Open Space, otherwise known as OSonOS). I would also like to thank all of you who were Access Queen "Givers" - who offered roomshares, and ride shares, who housed Askers and transported them, who donated money to the Access Queen Fund (including that wonderful team effort to get OSI-Canada's generous donation into my hot little hands at the conference), who brought items to sell at the Global Village Marketplace and Silent Auction, and who purchased each others' goods and services during the OSonOS, all raising funding and awareness for the Access Queen Fund. Many thanks also to the Halifax host team for offering sliding scale registration for Askers! The Access Queen "Fund" raises resources, not all of which is money, as you can see above. I was also honored to help people write letters of requests to funding organizations, research on-the-ground costs for their travels, find rides, get a bit of background on Open Space to read up before their first OS experience, develop how to ask friends and colleagues for support, and more. To give you folks an idea of what everyone's Access Queen energies looked like at the OSonOS -- The Global Village Marketplace (where people sell items and services to make money for their trip or donate to the Access Queen Fund): Three long tables had on them (I shall give you a sampling) Turkish chewing gum, a book on Berlin graffiti artists, books of poetry and prose by some of our multi-talented colleagues, hand-made greeting cards, soft soft soft hand-knit scarves and woven silk shawls, colorful earrings and more. At the Silent Auction (where everyone bids to buy items and services to raise money for the Access Queen Fund): Three long tables and also a level above that had on them a silk scarf that has traveled to Paris, London, Jaipur, Singapor, Melbourne and more, a shawl from India, a hand-made Estonian pig, a long stemmed glass blossom, Chechen Sufi music, U.S. buffalo nickels made of chocolate, Austrian sweet wine, pure Quebec maple syrup and maple wine, a "Dead Moose" t-shirt, talking stones and listening stones, books on simplifying our lives and on large group processes for change, Greek red saffron, cds of music by Chris Williamson and by our own Chris Corrigan, a glass art necklace, 'indigenous Russian soap bubble solution', original paintings by a famous Turkish painter-facilitator, 'delicious German chocolate.has only suffered a little bit on the journey - will still taste wonderful', a Canadian paperweight, Russian alphabet stickers, and the opportunity to have a song of your choice sung for you. Does that give you a little sampling of the tastes and treasures there? The money we raised this year before the event (through your individual donations large and small) went towards several peoples' registration fees, a bit of travel money for a few folks, and some pocket money for several people to spend on meals and such during their stay in Halifax. Together, you and I, dear colleagues, raised $972 US ($1164 Canadian / 796 Euros / 27,764 Rubles) before the OSonOS, and with this plus non-financial resources we were able to help 15 people get to the OSonOS. And I can tell you, fellow OSniks, their contribution to the discussions, the space-holding, and celebration plus their generosity to help others was / is a true gift to us all. To think if you hadn't asked for our support, dear Askers - we might never have been able to learn from and play with such marvelous people as you. At the event, the collective efforts at the Global Village Marketplace and Silent Auction raised $1,011 US ($1,212 Canadian / 828 Euros / 28,878 Russian Rubles) -- all of which goes to seed the fund for "Askers" who wish to join us in-person at OSonOS in 2006 in Moscow, Russia. How amazing amazing amazing you are. With love and gratitude, Access Queen (aka Lisa Heft) ___________________________ L i s a H e f t Consultant, Facilitator, Educator O p e n i n g S p a c e 2325 Oregon Berkeley, California 94705-1106 USA +01 510 548-8449 <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] <http://www.openingspace.net> www.openingspace.net
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