We are excited to announce that in a last push to get supplies and monetary funding for The Ladybug Project in 2011, we were able to collect $1,700 in school supplies and $900 in monetary donations!!! Thanks everyone for your help!

Tonight, Peter from our Board of Directors and several of our FGCU volunteers got together and packaged up over 800 pounds of supplies for our schools in Equatorial Guinea! The items include soccer outfits for the school, clothes for the teachers, healthcare supplies for the clinic, and hundreds of pounds of school supplies, will be sent using donated shipping to Luba in Equatorial Guinea, and then driven by volunteers to the Moka Village!

For information on how you can donate supplies, click here!

Do you have school or healthcare supplies you'd like to donate? Drop them off at the College of Health Sciences at Florida Gulf Coast University! The collection boxes are located in "Ben Hill Griffin 224"! Thanks to the FGCU Ladybug Club for making this happen!

Last night the Tennessee  Tech University Spanish Club held an awesome Ladybug Project awareness event at Poet's on the Square Coffee shop in Cookeville, TN. Not only was there a huge turnout, but the club was able to collect a large amount of monetary donations in addition to several hundred pounds of supplies! Check out the pictures! A special  thanks to Frank at TTU for his efforts spearheading the effort!

For more information on how you can plan and awareness event on our behalf, check out: http://www.theladybugproject.com/raise-funds-for-us.html

We have just sent another box of school supplies to our schools in Moka, Equaotorial Guinea! Composed entirely of donations, from a variety of donors, the supplies include notebooks, business clothing for the teachers, and even some arts and crafts materials. With this latest supply shipment, we have now sent 766 pounds of supplies to Equatorial Guinea in less than one year!

Interested in donating used and new supplies? Check out this page.

For more information on how you can help, email our Executive Director, Kim Reuter: kereuter@theladybugproject.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Contact: Kim Reuter, The Ladybug Project Inc. Executive Director, 850-320-3237

HUNDREDS OF LEE COUNTY SOCCER PLAYERS TO PARTICIPATE IN “STRIKERS FOR STRIKERS” AND SEND SPORTS EQUIPMENT TO AFRICA

Fort Myers – From August 17th to September 17th, the Lee County Strikers soccer program will be holding a “Strikers for Strikers” Soccer Equipment Charity Drive to benefit kids in West Africa. Partnered with a locally based non-profit, called The Ladybug Project Inc., kids of all ages will be donating their gently used shoes and soccer materials so that kids in rural villages in Africa will have real equipment to play with.

“Soccer is a game that ties families, villages, and whole areas together,” Kim Reuter said of the recipient schools in Equatorial Guinea, West Africa. “In fact, when we first visited our school sites May 2010, one of the things that the teachers requested were jerseys, shoes, and soccer balls so that the kids could play in teams against each other with a real ball. During our visit, the students were playing football barefoot with a ball of trash (they had tied it together to resemble a football), and designated teams by having everyone without a t-shirt play together.”

Hearing this inspirational story, Will MacArdle, a Strikers soccer coach, decided to get active. Calling on all of the Strikers teams to come together to help create change, he said, “No kid should ever have to use a rolled up ball of trash in order to play soccer. Let's do something for these people that will have such an amazing impact on the quality of their lives. We may even create the next Messi as a result of these donations!”

Founded in 1986, the Lee County Strikers soccer club involves hundreds of students who play by the motto, “Live the Passion, Live the Game.”

The Ladybug Project Inc. is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization which connects communities across the world to advance education and healthcare in Africa. For more information, please visit: www.theladybugproject.com

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The Ladybug Project has launched its first annual supply drive to benefit our schools in Equatorial Guinea! Thanks to our exciting partnership with Simply Equal Education, we will be able to ship our school supplies at low-cost to our Central-West African recipients.

Starting today, five schools in Florida and several businesses will be collecting used school supplies from students as they clean out their lockers and prepare for their summer vacations. While it may not seem logical to send a half-used notebook to Africa, the success of this program through other organizations, and the lack of materials in some rural African schools, actually make the program rather ingenious. American half-used supplies being sent to Equatorial Guinea for underprivileged students to use, all at a total cost far below an African teacher's monetary burden of buying overpriced supplies in-country.

If you have supplies you would like to donate (no matter where you are in the world!), you can email us (ladybug.project.eg@gmail.com) or (if you happen to be in South Florida), we can organize a donation pick up free of charge. Supplies will then be repackaged and sent on a mid-July shipment to Equatorial Guinea.

So far we've accepted supplies from individuals in two states and in five cities; can YOU help US make a difference?