Lawns for Love

Lawns for LOVE

It hasn't happened yet - but I am in the middle of getting it started. Lawns for Love is a concept, an idea that came to me while I was dreaming. God does that to me. He gives me great and empowering dreams so that I can maybe develop them and help myself, my family, or in this case - Operation Iraqi Children. OIC is a great organization started by Gary Sinise and author Laura Hillenbrand. She wrote the fantastic book "Seabiscuit". She and Gary formed OIC a few years back - but I just found out about it this past fall when I went to NYC on my birthday.

Lawns for Love is a way to help so many people from every single walk of life. Ultimately the benefactor is the communities throughout the United States, as well as the deserving kids in the country of Iraq who don't have enough school supplies. OIC is an organization that literally hands out school supplies to thousands of Iraqi kids who otherwise would have NOTHING to write with, nothing to write on, and nothing to use to better their future in terms of education in their homeland. We take this for granted. We go to the store every year and buy packs and packs of school supplies for our own kids without even blinking an eye. BIG banners announce "Back to School" savings, and there we are! We (Americans) buy up the store and then probably end up throwing out a portion of the supplies over the next year if the kids don't take them to class. The kids in Iraq (and of course other countries) don't have these superstores, they don't have the money, they don't have the options we have. OIC has provided a means to supply the supplies - but it is not free.

Lawns for Love is a concept I had while dreaming. I'm working with local and national courthouse personnel including parole officers throughout the U.S. to give kids who have 50-100 hours of community service the opportunity to work their time off by mowing lawns in their own area. Each lawn would be about the size of an average homeowner's lawn and they would work off 50 hours if they mowed 30 and 80 hours if they mowed 50 lawns. They could mow 70 lawns and work off 100 hours if their parole officer felt they could do that much work. A larger lawn would be more time off obviously. It may behoove the kids to go to the country and do a few acres at a time! The owners of the lawns would then pledge $25.00 - 50.00 to the OIC through the envelopes I send them. I will be hosting fund raising events to get the money to send the envelopes. Faith is more than willing to do her thing for the cause!

Because my son Reuben is in the Army, he will be handing supplies out to the kids soon and I never want him to run out of crayolas or pencils to hand out. I'm a teacher. Being near my son through him handing out the supplies I would be handing out in the U.S. to my own students just makes sense. If you don't have a lawn to be mowed, but you want to send a donation to the OIC, please, do this! You can find them at: www.operationiraqichildren.org and I know you'll be proud of your self for doing so. Education is NOT the filling of a pail - it is the LIGHTING of fire! Ignite someone's future if you can.

If you are a parole officer and want to help me with this project, please feel free to contact me.

NOTE: as of November 1, 2007 no progress has been made in the Oklahoma City area to begin this project. I will now seek outside cities and counties for help. I will begin writing for a grant to cover the costs of administrating this foundation. I hope it works!