You will notice that the post listing has drastically reduced... I did some house cleaning today, and deleted the majority of the old posts.

It's time to look at 2007.

Dance From The Heart is becoming a National Non-Profit organization. The first "official" board meeting was held today in Houston, and we have begun the process of getting the structure set. We still have to file paperwork for 501c3 status, but the biggest step was deciding what our goal was, how we would run the organization, and what we'd do this year. Here are a couple of key points from today's meeting:

Initial Board Members:

Anne Caruthers (Ayana), President
Aisa El-Hindi, Vice President (I haven't gotten permission to use Aisa's real name, so not doing it yet - those of you in Houston know her well.)
Shelley Fahrenthold (Silke), Secretary/Treasurer

The board will expand as needed to support the growing organization.

The overall mission of the organization is as follows (formal mission statement with better wording still being crafted):
DFTH is a multi-cultural charitable organization that will utilize dance performance as a means of awareness and fundraising to assist in humanitarian relief of world crisis events or conditions.

Houston's event is tentatively scheduled for late October of 2007.

Local chapters will be organized and partially funded from the National level.

We have had one request from Laila about the Sulukule... that is currently under consideration. My initial thought is that this definitely falls within the mission of the organization, and can be done from the state chapter level.

So... anyone that is still interested in participating in the goal of "dancers united to make the world a better place"... please feel free to post your thoughts. I don't want 2007 to slip away without anyone doing anything! We ARE moving forward!!!

Feel free to message me if you are interested in forming a state/local chapter, or otherwise being involved in the organization.