My Helping Hand Journal

Mary Jane Harper Slipped Through The Cracks...

2011-08-11T19:03:00.000-04:00

The following is a review I did back in 1999 of the movie Mary Jane Harper Cried Last Night. I thought it would be helpful to read what I wrote--and to, hopefully, watch the movie, read the book, or both.

Child-abuse is a very serious problem--and, most times, the people who do it aren't "bad" people but, instead, basically-good people who have sucked up a lot of bad feelings inside of them and, finally, couldn't contain them any longer.

We need to work towards preventing things from going this far by providing nonjudgmental places like Parents Anonymous where people can own their feelings so that they can deal with them in a positive way instead of taking it out on their kids...

Mary Jane Harper slipped through the cracks--an innocent child falling victim to the "grown-ups" around her.

Among these:

A mother who was still being mentally-tortured by the memories of her own traumatic childhood of sexual abuse by her father and physical abuse by her mother, who punished the little girl for stealing her husband by locking her in a rat-infested closet.

Grandparents (especially the mother) who were so concerned about keeping up a good appearance that they stood in the way of Mary Jane's mother's continued participation in Parents Anonymous, where she was getting help and support,

The family doctor who refused to believe that child abuse went on in affluent homes.

The psychiatrist who only went through the motions of treating Mary Jane's mother but was more concerned about seeing enough different patients to laugh all the way to the bank. When the alarm on his watch went off, indicating that it was time for their session to be over and the next one to start, it didn't matter that Mary Jane's mother was experiencing an important breakthrough. She was ushered out and the next patient ushered in. Cha-CHING! Cha-CHING!

The neighbors who were concerned about Mary Jane's constant crying but chose not to get involved.

At the beginning of the movie, Mary Jane Harper cried last night--at the end of the movie, Mary Jane Harper died last night.

This wasn't a movie meant to leave the viewer feeling complacently-comfortable--and it did what it was supposed to very well!

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Please Read!!!

2011-08-11T18:15:00.000-04:00

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I first posted this as a Facebook Note on July 12 and was originally going to immediately post it here as well. However, a combination of trouble with my Internet connection and having to tend to other things when life began to march on made it so that I'm just now finishing posting it here. Please share it in hopes that Russell might be located. If you know anything, please send me a message via Facebook. Thanks!

If anybody knows the whereabouts of Russell T. Hartsaw, please let me know.

I've made some notes about him that I'm going to put down here.

I believe that the problem began when he decided to switch health care providers.

Details Of The Switch

Last year, he decided to switch health care providers. He really liked his doctor, but he didn't care for the hospital connected with him, so, when this company came out of nowhere promising better hospital care and a lot of other things, Russell made the decision to go with them. They weren't just basic medical care, but they would also provide dental care, eye care, psychiatric care (if needed), and had their own assisted living program should Russell get to the place where he couldn't live alone. They also had available free lunch throughout the week, social activities, and transportation to and from. A visiting nurse would come to his apartment at least a couple of times per week and would even help him with his shopping so that he could make the best choices for his diet.

However, Russell ended up having several health issues under their care. He thought that he was just getting older at first--until he was hearing the same thing from some of the others who had switched.

Could simply be circumstantial evidence, but he began wondering if, perhaps, this service might be part of a plan to decrease the population of older people living in debt-ridden California.

I don't want to lay out all of his life here, as Russell is a very private person about some things, but I know that he ended up (supposedly) having a nervous breakdown and spending some time in a hospital late last year, and he was telling me that he might have to go there again. 

However, I haven't been able to find out anything for quite some time other than he was (initially) no longer at home and (sometime after that) no longer living at his apartment.

Incarcerated?

Originally, I posted that I was trying to find the whereabouts of Russell in a thread form, and one person made the comment that he might have gone back to prison.

My response was that he had stayed clean since getting out on parole back in May of 2003 and had been a model prisoner for many years before that.

Let me note here that Russell had never been sent to prison for any violent sort of crimes.  He started out in his street youth days doing survival crimes such as hustling and petty theft.  Later, he would rob banks--but never with a weapon.  He would simply hand the teller a note saying to hand over all of the money.

There came a time when he became more comfortable with the prison routine than in living on the outside.  When the outside got to be too bewildering to him, he would actually go through the motions of robbing a bank just to be caught and sent back.

However, during his last time in prison, he got to thinking of a better future for himself and decided that he wasn't going to go that route again.  One thing that helped him was getting a college degree (Bachelor's in Criminal Justice) along with teaching adult education classes on the inside and becoming a very popular teacher, as his delivery was entertaining and engaging.

Reaching Out To Street Youth

For his parole, he was placed in the city of San Diego, and it was during that time that he noticed the growing population of street youth in the area.  Looking at them, he saw a younger version of himself, and he didn't want these kids to have to go through what he'd gone through before having a possible chance of turning their lives around.

While saying on one hand that prison had been an enjoyable learning experience for him, Russell didn't want to think of these young people ending up going there.

Russell felt safe in prison--in fact, the outside life still bewilders him a lot even to this very day--but he has always realized that there had to be more than that in the future of these kids, and he was determined to get them there.

While he was able to find a handful of (at least, fairly) enthusiastic volunteers to help him in his mission of reaching out to the local street youth, he was disappointed, frustrated, and even angry that he was unable to gather up many more volunteers in this large city.

Thus, in time, he went online and Invisible Youth Network was born.

I met Russell online at a discussion site called Duno on January 15, 2007 when he was wanting people to visit his website.  Upon seeing his website, I realized that he was a really amazing person and that we were on the same page re: a lot of issues, so I sent him a message asking him if he would like to e-mail back-and-forth.

One of my 2007 Resolutions was to put together a kind of online dream team of people who were interested in addressing the issue of various parts of our society falling through the cracks without a safety net, and I knew right off that Russell would be a major asset to have on such a dream team.

In a decision we made having nothing to do with romance, Russell and I have been "married" since February 19 of that same year.  That is, we decided to have an online marriage of our dreams, and Russell even designed a marriage certificate to go with it.

Over time, we have even considered the possibility that our friendship might even end up including an actual marriage (romantic).  However, as much as I love Russell as a person and always will (not to mention being very attracted to him both physically and emotionally), I've decided that going this route might ruin our friendship, because we would probably end up having frequent and serious arguments.  He and I come from two very different worlds, and I've come to realize that this would, more likely than not, make a marriage to each other either end in divorce (likely, a messy one) or else end in two people feeling trapped in a major mistake.  I think too much of both of us to put us through something like that.

Early in 2007, Russell shared his dream of an organization to help homeless and/or otherwise at-risk kids with me.  He had just launched one a few years before but had to give it up after suffering a series of strokes.

Due to both these strokes and having Crohn's Disease at a serious enough level that complications from it almost killed him a few years before (though his flare-ups are now more rare and less serious), Russell has been on disability with his only other sources of income being donating blood plasma (which he had to give up after his strokes) and getting tipped for giving lectures about life in prison to criminal justice students from time to time.

Around half of his income goes for rent with most of the rest going for groceries, haircuts, and other necessities.

Once in awhile, Russell will be good to himself and buy something for his apartment, go out to eat, get a new clothing item, etc.  He'll also occasionally buy one or more friends a gift.

However, most of what's left of Russell's monthly paycheck after making necessary payments from it has gone to helping the street kids.   He'd pass out gift cards to fast-food restaurants and phone cards so that they could call for assistance or even call home, if there were somebody home who would like a phone call from them.  He would also do things like order a pizza and sit around with them while they ate it and opened up to them about what had gotten them to where they were.

He knew that he could do only so much alone, which is why he saw the need for getting people organized to do street outreach on a greater scale.

Although Russell is frustrated that IYN couldn't have been even more widespread by now, he and I are both happy to report that there are some very enthusiastic chapters of it with the most active to date being the one in Fulton County, Ohio.

To find out more about IYN, please check out My Helping Hand Journal, which is the blog I've created to give my take on IYN and related matters:

http://mhhj.blogspot.com/

For right now, here are the most important issues to address:

Even with Russell missing, our mission needs to go on. I hope that everybody reading this will think of a way to make life better for our invisible youth. They aren't all out on the streets (though too many of them are after getting to the place that they, sadly, felt safer and more in control living this kind of life than they did living at home). Some are still living at home in spite of the fact that they're having one or more of the following happening to them: getting bullied at school while those who are supposed to be in charge are nodding and winking); getting abused at home (physically, emotionally, and/or sexually); are loved at home and popular at school but are part of a family who is having trouble making ends meet. Some of them might even be homeless with their entire family living in with others, at a campground, at a shelter, or even in a vehicle). Please do what you can to help, even if it's only letting others (who might be able to help) know about things like this.
Please help me to find Russell. A lot of the operations of IYN are now up in the air and needing Russell to help sort things out. He had been telling me that he was trying to pick out some people to carry on should he no longer be able to. He has been aware that he isn't getting any younger and that he has health issues. However, he didn't get this all finished before he disappeared. I believe he's alive, but is, likely, in some sort of institution. I can't seem to get any sort of information about him. If you live in the San Diego area and/or know somebody who does, anything you can share with me would be very helpful.

Thank you so much for reading this!

To Russell: There's a lighthouse in my heart, and its beaming out its searchlight in hopes of finding you soon......................................

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Pointing Fingers? or Extended Hands?

2011-07-15T11:41:00.000-04:00

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"Walk a mile another man's moccasins before you criticize him."
Native American Saying

The following is my response to this article about a young mother who went grocery shopping and left her two sons (ages 4 and 1) in the family car with the doors locked and the windows rolled up on an evening when the temperature was still in the high eighties.

Not only did this woman use bad judgment when it came to the conditions that she had left her boys unattended (this being true even if she were just running into the store for two or three items and wouldn't be gone over 15 minutes), but she also beat up the woman who tried to help her.

I see this as a case of two basically-good women. One of them was trying to be not just helpful but, also, a lifesaver to two little boys. The other one was trying to raise her boys while not feeling as if there were anyone she could turn to for help, and she now feared that she would lose both her boys and her job, so she lashed out at the Good Samaritan.

People who are struggling with life should never have to be afraid that somebody is going to intrude and take their kids away from them unless they were actually people who were perverted and sadistic--the type who use their kids for cheap thrills.

I find it to be a sad commentary on contemporary life that it has become fashionable to hate on others for what is even a petty reason to do so such as a person having an "unacceptable" body size or happening to be born the same nationality as one or more people who have turned out to be terrorists.

When something like this (a woman leaving her small children in a locked car with the windows rolled up on a hot day) comes along, we seem to feel even more "justified" in hating on her.

But does hating on this woman really solve the problem? NO!!! It only gives us a false sense of superiority, and having a false sense of superiority shouldn't be what it's all about. What it's all about should be about addressing problems and trying to solve them in as positive of a way as possible! It's about keeping a family together whenever possible instead of tearing them apart.

Anyway, this is what I wrote for a discussion thread for Facebook (where the article was shared):

I have some very mixed feelings here.

For starters, this woman (the mother) did a very wrong thing by leaving her kids in a hot, locked car, and it was right for the other woman to try to help.

However, I also understand why the mother reacted the way that she did--and her reaction (not a good one in spite of being an understandable one) was one brought on by a well-grounded fear resulting from the type of social climate that rears its ugly head today.

Believe it or not, this woman seems to love her sons and not want to lose them, and she saw this intervention as threatening.

She was trying to get her grocery shopping done and made a wrong judgment call. It's possible that she hadn't even left the boys in the car that long (still, a wrong judgment call due to the weather) and didn't plan to at the time that the woman spotted them, as she was on her way back out to the car shortly after that.

We have two choices here:

1. We can strip this mother of her children based on what happened that evening; possibly, send her to jail; and, likely, deprive her of employment (to help her to support her family) at a time when jobs are hard to find.

or

2. We can realize that this is a woman who loves her kids and is trying to keep all of their heads above water. She's struggling. What we need to do at this point is to ask her what can be done to help. We don't talk down to her. We talk to her friend-to-friend so that she realizes that we'd like to help instead of label her a bad person and throw her away.

Even if she were at a bar somewhere drinking while her kids were in the car, it's something better addressed as a cry for help. But, in this case, the woman WASN'T at a bar. She was, instead, trying to care for her family while feeling that there was nobody to help her.

She needs to feel safe when trying to seek help for her family. If she feels safe--like nobody's going to respond to her requests for help by taking her kids away--she will be able to go to an agency, ask for help, and receive what she needs to help her to see her way clear.

We're all in this together, and who's to say that the time won't come when we have to reach out to social services in order to help our family and/or ourselves over a rough patch!?!

Should that time come, would we want to be met with pointing fingers or extended hands?

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Evil Era Ending At Summer's Beginning

2011-06-01T00:48:00.000-04:00

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Good Riddance!!!

Russell was one of the boys
who spent some time in this dreadful place!!!

Posted To Craigslist

2011-05-19T00:04:00.000-04:00

Below is what I posted to the general community of San Diego's Craigslist on Wednesday, May 18, 2011. I'm reposting it here (copying and pasting) in order to share it even longer and with a greater readership. I'm very concerned about Russell, and I'm not the only one. As my message says, please get in touch with me on Facebook if you know anything and/or have any questions...

My name is Ainsley Jo Phillips, and I'm from Anderson, Indiana.

I met a very special and beautiful person from your city online on January 15, 2007. His name is Russell T. Hartsaw. If you don't actually know him by name, you might still remember seeing him around. More times than not, black is his favorite color to wear, and he looks like a shorter version of Harrison Ford.

Shortly after moving to San Diego in 2003, he learned how big the problem of children, teens, and young adults being homeless is in your area and set out to do his part to help. After several years of reaching out to these young people on his own and with the help of various friends, he founded Invisible Youth Network.

Below, find something I wrote about him and his mission on his 70th Birthday (this past Saturday, May 14). It has been copied and pasted from my IYN blog called My Helping Hand Journal.

Sadly, things have been pretty much on-hold as far as any official business going on at headquarters, because I can't find out where Russell is. As you will read, I don't believe that this is something that Russell liked or planned. I'm guessing that he has been moved to a medical or assisted living facility, but I can't find out where due to the Hippa Act. He, likely, no longer has a computer at this time. What brought him to this place in his life might even be some kind of unsavory agenda of certain others. When you read what I wrote, you'll have more of an idea re: what I'm talking about.

If you know Russell and his whereabouts, please get in touch with me by sending me a message at Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/face.of.ainsleyjo

As I've written in my blog-entry, which I've copied and pasted below, I hope that you'll get involved in our mission.

Below are some links to IYN's website as Russell left it when he vanished (obviously, dated in places); my IYN blog; my personal blog-format website, AJville; and the blog-format website and Facebook group of one of our most active chapters, which is located in Fulton County, Ohio. Please help me to find Russell, and please read what I've written below to learn how you can help what he began...

http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/default.aspx

http://mhhj.blogspot.com/

http://ajville.blogspot.com/

http://www.fultoncountyiyn.com/

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_348348868466#!/home.php?sk=group_348348868466

About Russell On His 70th Birthday (posted on Saturday, May 14, 2011)

This is NOT how I had been planning on celebrating Russell's birthday. Hopefully, I'll soon be able to celebrate this very special milestone in his life (turning 70) the way I had planned to--with him online again.

If you live in the San Diego area and know something about Russell's whereabouts these days, please send me a message on Facebook. Here is a link to my profile page.

Let me explain. Russell was having some personal and health issues (as in being given some medicine that seemed to be having bad side-effects).

All at once, I began to hear the news that he had been taken somewhere else but nobody seemed to be at liberty to tell me just where.

I'm not going to go into a lot of details here, as I only have some limited information that Russell told me about such as getting the same medication that he had been taking for years through another (supposedly legitimate) source. He had also been prescribed some inappropriate medication (I believe, having to do with his blood-pressure) by the same place. He began to hear horror stories by other area seniors and got suspicious.

Anyway, I'm not going to say anymore here at this point, as having--and using--a small amount of information in a factual way can prove to do more harm than good.

There are people out there who have more experience and knowledge than I do, and, hopefully, at least some of the people reading this would fall under this category.

Please help if you know how!!! To anyone reading this, please keep Russell in your prayers!!!

Until he's able to get online once more (or is able to get in touch with somebody who can) and get things straightened out, the activities of IYN headquarters in San Diego have had to be put on hold.

However, any people who are part of various IYN chapters or those who want to get involved in our mission should keep on doing what you're doing or want to do.

In San Diego (and its surrounding area) alone, there are thousands of street youth, and they need to be helped!!!

First off, here's what they don't need:

1. They don't need to be rounded up and taken to juvenile hall (or something similar) and told that they will not be released until they give their real names and how to contact their parents and/or other responsible people in their hometowns. They have gone through a whole lot to get away from there, because they have reason to believe that what is back in their old lives is a bad environment. There are very few cases of kids just leaving home for the lark of it. They are generally leaving behind abusive situations, whether those situations are bullying at school that nobody seems to be able or willing to make stop or physical/verbal/emotional/sexual abuse going on right in their own homes.

2. They don't need the kind of boot-camp atmosphere that, unfortunately, seems to have become so common these days. Leave them right where they are before doing this kind of thing to them!

3. They don't need to be taken in by people with motives that are less than stellar (e.g. people wanting sexual playthings and/or slave labor at their ready).

What they do need is a growing number of people who are willing to go out to talk to them--and truly listen to what they have to say!

They also need things like food cards for places like McDonald's, phone cards (that will work with pay phones, as they rarely if ever have cell phones), personal care items (e.g. toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, sanitary napkins, shampoo, combs, brushes, nail clippers, etc.), clothing (outer wear, underwear, shoes, socks, etc.), knapsacks, wallets, notebooks, pens.

They need social interaction without strings (e.g. must go to a certain church on a regular basis; must come to live in a certain home or shelter whether ready to or not) such as cook-outs, trips to pizza parlors, holiday celebration gatherings, etc.

For those young people who are tired of living out in the elements, we need families who will take them in and treat them like visiting cousins. One church in particular has been organizing something like this with a lot of success.

As soon as we have the funding for it, one of our dreams is to create places like camps and ranches where our young people can live safely and with respect (We, obviously, have zero tolerance for the boot-camp kind of experience, even though we also have some rules such as ones concerning fighting and substance abuse) while taking whatever amount of time they need to get back into the mainstream.

Obviously, IYN is unable to pursue this kind of project at this time, but the other kinds of things mentioned above ARE things that we can do now.

Russell has invested both time and money into our kids for many years, but there is only one of him.

A couple of the most wonderful birthday presents that you could give to him at this time is to increase the number of those who are active in helping our kids and to, if you're able, help him to get back into a situation where he can, once more, direct the happenings of IYN and doing what he was planning on doing right before this situation happened: handpicking reliable and caring people to share various responsibilities that he was once doing on his own, because he realizes that he can't do it all--and that he also must be prepared for the unexpected such as what has happened to him now.

Please keep Russell in your prayers, love, and positive thoughts--and, if you have any information on him, please contact me!

About Russell On His 70th Birthday

2011-05-14T08:19:00.002-04:00

This is NOT how I had been planning on celebrating Russell's birthday.  Hopefully, I'll soon be able to celebrate this very special milestone in his life (turning 70) the way I had planned to--with him online again.

If you live in the San Diego area and know something about Russell's whereabouts these days, please send me a message on Facebook.  Here is a link to my profile page. 

Let me explain.  Russell was having some personal and health issues (as in being given some medicine that seemed to be having bad side-effects).

All at once, I began to hear the news that he had been taken somewhere else but nobody seemed to be at liberty to tell me just where.

I'm not going to go into a lot of details here, as I only have some limited information that Russell told me about such as getting the same medication that he had been taking for years through another (supposedly legitimate) source.  He had also been prescribed some inappropriate medication (I believe, having to do with his blood-pressure) by the same place.  He began to hear horror stories by other area seniors and got suspicious.

Anyway, I'm not going to say anymore here at this point, as having--and using--a small amount of information in a factual way can prove to do more harm than good.

There are people out there who have more experience and knowledge than I do, and, hopefully, at least some of the people reading this would fall under this category. 

Please help if you know how!!!  To anyone reading this, please keep Russell in your prayers!!!

Until he's able to get online once more (or is able to get in touch with somebody who can) and get things straightened out, the activities of IYN headquarters in San Diego have had to be put on hold.

However, any people who are part of various IYN chapters or those who want to get involved in our mission should keep on doing what you're doing or want to do.

In San Diego (and its surrounding area) alone, there are thousands of street youth, and they need to be helped!!!

First off, here's what they don't need:

1.  They don't need to be rounded up and taken to juvenile hall (or something similar) and told that they will not be released until they give their real names and how to contact their parents and/or other responsible people in their hometowns.  They have gone through a whole lot to get away from there, because they have reason to believe that what is back in their old lives is a bad environment.  There are very few cases of kids just leaving home for the lark of it.  They are generally leaving behind abusive situations, whether those situations are bullying at school that nobody seems to be able or willing to make stop or physical/verbal/emotional/sexual abuse going on right in their own homes.

2.  They don't need the kind of boot-camp atmosphere that, unfortunately, seems to have become so common these days.  Leave them right where they are before doing this kind of thing to them!

3.   They don't need to be taken in by people with motives that are less than stellar (e.g. people wanting sexual playthings and/or slave labor at their ready).

What they do need is a growing number of people who are willing to go out to talk to them--and truly listen to what they have to say!

They also need things like food cards for places like McDonald's, phone cards (that will work with pay phones, as they rarely if ever have cell phones), personal care items (e.g. toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, sanitary napkins, shampoo, combs, brushes, nail clippers, etc.), clothing (outer wear, underwear, shoes, socks, etc.), knapsacks, wallets, notebooks, pens.

They need social interaction without strings (e.g. must go to a certain church on a regular basis; must come to live in a certain home or shelter whether ready to or not) such as cook-outs, trips to pizza parlors, holiday celebration gatherings, etc.

For those young people who are tired of living out in the elements, we need families who will take them in and treat them like visiting cousins.  One church in particular has been organizing something like this with a lot of success.

As soon as we have the funding for it, one of our dreams is to create places like camps and ranches where our young people can live safely and with respect (We, obviously, have zero tolerance for the boot-camp kind of experience, even though we also have some rules such as ones concerning fighting and substance abuse) while taking whatever amount of time they need to get back into the mainstream.

Obviously, IYN is unable to pursue this kind of project at this time, but the other kinds of things mentioned above ARE things that we can do now.

Russell has invested both time and money into our kids for many years, but there is only one of him.

A couple of the most wonderful birthday presents that you could give to him at this time is to increase the number of those who are active in helping our kids and to, if you're able, help him to get back into a situation where he can, once more, direct the happenings of IYN and doing what he was planning on doing right before this situation happened:  handpicking reliable and caring people to share various responsibilities that he was once doing on his own, because he realizes that he can't do it all--and that he also must be prepared for the unexpected such as what has happened to him now.

Please keep Russell in your prayers, love, and positive thoughts--and, if you have any information on him, please contact me!

Happy Birthday, IYN!!!

2011-03-26T23:29:00.000-04:00

Four years ago today,

Invisible Youth Network

was launched

with

Russell T. Hartsaw

as our founder and chairman.

At this time,

Russell is dealing with some health problems

and could use your prayers, love, and positive thoughts.

If you live in the San Diego area,

he can also use you.

For even more years than IYN has been around,

Russell has been volunteering his time and resources

to reach out to the street kids

who have come from many parts of the country

(choosing San Diego due to its relatively-favorable year round climate).

He has been successful in getting several others in the area to join him in this endeavor.

However, the several others who have helped so far

make up only a portion of the population of San Diego and San Diego County.

Because Russell took ill suddenly,

there hasn't been time to put someone in charge of donations

coming into the address given,

so, the best thing to do now is to take items from our  
wish list

to either places like The Storefront or Stand Up For Kids

or else directly to where the street kids hang out.

If you don't live in the San Diego area,

why not do this for street kids who are in your own area.

It's time to show these young people that there are people out there who care about them.

Remember that you need to approach them on their terms

without judgment

and

without believing that you know what's good for them

and taking them somewhere against their will.

Thanks, in advance, for all of the help that you can give.

I'll keep you up on Russell as I find out more.

glitter-graphics.com

I Know THIS Much. . .

2011-02-24T16:36:00.000-05:00

The operation of IYN is pretty much up in the air at this time.

Russell has been experiencing some health problems, and, as soon as he's able, he will, likely, be delegating assignments to people who can best handle them according to what his vision has been.

I believe that he'll still, to one degree or another, be very much involved, but, for now, he needs to take care of himself.

At this time, I'm trying to find out more and will be passing this along. I live almost 3000 miles away, but I'm in the process of trying to contact people who live in his area and who have worked with us on the mission of IYN.

This is all that I have to report at this time, but I'll be returning soon.

Please keep Russell in your prayers, love, and positive thoughts, and don't forget our many kids who need extended hands instead of pointing fingers.

glitter-graphics.com

Sure & Unsure...

2010-12-24T19:56:00.000-05:00

It is Christmas Eve 2010, and I'm now sure and unsure.

I'm not sure what the future is for Invisible Youth Network. Russell wants to take things in another direction. He told me that he will be revealing new plans in February (his estimate).

One thing that I am sure of is that there are several thousand young people in San Diego alone who are homeless.

Another thing I know for sure is that children and teens are getting bullied in school while it seems as if the faculty and staff just kinda nod and wink.

I know that there is something wrong with this picture, and something needs to be done.

What direction we're going with this in our organization is still up in the air at this time, so all I can tell you is to stay tuned...

'Tis The Season!

2010-11-20T08:41:00.017-05:00

Mini-Entry #1

Starting today (November 20, 2010) and going throughout January 15, 2011, I'll be adding to this blog-entry. Will explain the choice of dates later. Right now, however, I'm going out to run errands--which will include shopping for our kids. Catch you later. (Current time is 8:41 a.m., btw...)

Mini-Entry #2

It's a little after ten at night on the same day, and I had a wonderful shopping day. Because of my lymphedema and the fact that I'm not to the stage where I can wear footwear yet, I rarely do a lot of walking around outside of in my own home, but I made the exception today in order to actively participate in the IYN project for Christmas of contributing items to go into gift bags that will be passed out in San Diego, California--a place where runaway kids migrate to from many parts of the country due to its relatively-favorable year 'round climate.

The first place I went to was the post office in Markleville (Note: To those who don't already know, any town that isn't followed by the name of a state will be somewhere in my home state of Indiana. Because this is read all over the world, I'll follow all other towns/cities with the name of a state, even if it's obvious to U.S. citizens that New York City is in New York and Chicago is in Illinois.). I wish I had been thinking more clearly at the time, and I would have gotten the name of the nice person who waited on me there.

Anyway, I chose the Markleville post office because of it's closeness to the parking lot and it's extra-easy access for handicapped people. The purpose of going there was to pick up three flat-rate, ready-to-seal boxes for priority mail. One box would be used to send items, and the others would be used in the future for whatever...

From there, I went on to shop at the Dollar General Store in Pendleton.

Two very pleasant clerks helped me out there.

Dawn was the one whose line I went through when it was time to check out, and she was very helpful in honoring my request to put the items I'd gotten for IYN into one bag and to put items I'd bought for my personal use into another.

When I shop for the purpose of putting together a box to send to our headquarters (something I hadn't been able to do for a long time, even though I made regular donations through PayPal as well as doing my online shopping through GoodShop so that a percentage of what I paid would go to IYN), I usually get the box ready to mail except for one side. As I shop, I will place the items inside of the box so that I can tell how close it is to getting full. I like to fill the boxes to capacity without getting them so full that they won't close properly.

The other clerk, Melinda, not only directed me when it came to finding some items I needed in a store that had recently been rearranged (Pardon the interruption, but I need to make a trip to the little girls room and, then, call my mom to tell her goodnight.)...

(Still busy with some other things. . .Will continue this story a.s.a.p.)...

It's now early on Sunday morning with several hours of sleep between where I left this off and now, so I will continue this story before starting another one.

As I was saying a little bit ago about Melinda, she not only showed me where some of the items I was looking for were now located after the store had been rearranged to accommodate Christmas shopping displays, but she was also nice enough to go out with me to my car (which, for those who don't know, is actually my mom's car, which I'm driving until mine gets repaired and fitted with a current license plate) and help me to put things inside.

From there, it was on to the post office.

By now, the Markleville post office was closed (closing at eleven on Saturdays), so I went to the one on Raible Avenue in Anderson. There's a longer distance to walk before getting inside and to the service counter, but it keeps later hours and has very handicap-friendly access as well.

I was waited on by a very helpful clerk named Kim.

It had been awhile since I'd sent off a TLC package (or any kind of package using express or priority mail), so I got a very helpful refresher course from her.

For one thing, I'd been sending packages by express mail at previous times. It got them to their continental USA destinations very quickly (generally overnight) and for a flat rate, but it cost a few dollars more (not quite four dollars more, as it turns out). Priority mail gets things there almost as fast (generally, within two to three business days) and, in one of the special boxes which I've described, only costs $10.70 to send.

For those wanting to send TLC packages to IYN containing items from our wish list, this would be the way to go. The size to which I'm referring is what's called the medium sized box, and it's around the size of a shirt box. You'd be amazed at how much one of those boxes can hold without popping open!

Anyway, I have more to tell, but I will save that for another entry...

Mini-Entry #3

It's now Sunday morning at a little after eight-thirty (11/21/10), and I'm here to write a little more. One thing I've decided to do is to make this entry also serve as a kind of ongoing Christmas newsletter, so I'll be connecting here to a journal with the unusual name of:
Begun On Birch Bayh's 81st. Birthday

A journal begun on Thursday, January 22, 2009

Below is how it got it's name (the introduction that appears at the location of the blog):

Welcome to my main blog (that is, the one I'm using as a kind of journal or diary about anything and everything) here at WDC!!!

How did it get it's title?

The answer is that I started it on the 81st Birthday of former U.S. Senator from Indiana, Birch Evans Bayh, so I thought that it would be a pretty catchy title.

Since its first entry on January 22, 2009, it has been written in "once in awhile" but, as of now (meaning March 7, 2010), it should be written in on a much more regular basis, so please keep checking back. . .

This hot little link is how you get to it.

In order to keep this blog-entry from becoming too long with too many things, I'm going to be delegating my information to various other locations and try to keep this entry area as directly related to IYN activities as possible through the time I write my last part of it on January 15, 2011.

Continue to come back here, as I haven't finished building the infrastructure of this blog-entry--and won't have it finished until sometime on January 15.

That's all for now. Catch ya later!. . .

Mini-Entry #4

Here I am back in spite of modem trouble and other glitches--including being blocked from logging onto Blogger/Blogspot. Wasn't for anything personal. Just a site glitch of some sort. This I know because the problem was a widespread one instead of being one I was experiencing alone.

Anyway, I'm glad that I'm here finally. . .

A whole lot is happening with IYN and can best be found out by visiting our website. You can find two links to that in the right-hand margin of this blog.

I'm quite a bookworm, so, when I buy books these days, I try to shop using GoodShop. Not only that, but I encourage others to do the same.

I'm hoping to get back to Epinions again and start writing there more. Ditto re: Writing.com. Some of the things I'll be writing there are book reviews, and I'll definitely be encouraging those reading them to use the GoodShop portal at least part of the time.

That's all for now...

P.S. I think it's about time to start decking the halls a little...

Mini-Entry #5

It's Christmas Eve, and there has been a change in plans. This will be the last addition to this blog-entry. I'm now going to be starting a new one...

glitter-graphics.com

Okay! Laters. . .

What's Wrong With This Picture?

2010-11-17T11:17:00.001-05:00

Actually, everything's right with the picture,

but something kinda screwed-up

about the situation that inspired it...

Note:
This picture and other great things can be found by going here:
Click Me!

From One Bad Situation To Another. . .What Comes Next!?!

2010-11-16T07:04:00.000-05:00

Smell the coffee!

It's seldom about running off because you're angry about having a 9 p.m. school night curfew.

It's more about having school day bullying experiences and/or even having a homelife that goes FAR beyond the term "dysfunctional."

Even if it's about neither of those, there is, more times than not, a legitimate reason to want to get into a different environment.

Have these kids jumped from the frying pan into the fire or from the fire into the frying pan?

Either way, they need something better--MUCH better!

Chapters 'n' Such...

2010-11-15T14:12:00.001-05:00

I had a nice, long sleep and didn't get online until this afternoon.  When I checked my e-mail, I found the following message from Russell waiting to be read.  This message is about starting a chapter representing the mission of Invisible Youth Network, but it contains links to other important information as well.  I would encourage you to check it out--as well as encouraging you to share it with other people by using the following link:

http://mhhj.blogspot.com/2010/11/chapters-n-such.html

That way, you can share it on social sites such as Facebook, Tweet it, and share it in e-mails.  You can even share the link in snail mail messages and on flyers.

Having said all of this, here's the message:

Have you ever thought of running your own nonprofit organization? This is a great opportunity to do so. The Invisible Youth Network is chartering individuals and or organizations who are interested in reaching-out and helping homeless youth within their communities.

A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified, for example starting a chapter, office or division of the Invisible Youth Network in specified area.

This is an excellent opportunity to establish yourself within your community and make a name for yourself and your endeavors.

As a charter organization of the Invisible Youth Network you are covered by our paperwork, there are no further legal obligations on your part.

You have our support and help every step of the way.

Please see:

Chapter Application
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/ChapterApplication.aspx

Getting Started
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/GettngStarted.aspx

For an overview of the Invisible Youth Network please visit our website, it is important that you are knowledgeable about the organization that you want to charter with.

IYN National & International Website
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network

Home/Office:

940 Park Boulevard, Suite #334
San Diego, California 92101

619-272-9040
invisibleyout@gmail.com

Invisible Youth Network National Website
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/default.aspx

Invisible Youth Network Video, 1 of 3
http://youtu.be/AVEUJr-o0KY

Club IYN
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/BecomeaMember.aspx

Donations - Help Us Help!
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/helpushelp.aspx

Executive Leadership Team
http://groups.google.com/group/executive-leadership-team

IYN Chapters
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/IYNChapters.aspx

If We all Give a Little
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqG4pEzddGU

Our Wish List for The Homeless Kids
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/ourwishlist.aspx

Volunteer Opportunities
http://invisibleyouthnetwork1.community.officelive.com/VolunteerOpportunities.aspx

- Love your kids for who they are, not who you want them to be! -

Homeless Awareness #1-- Stop HOBOphobia!

2010-11-04T17:17:00.004-04:00

Please pray for those on the street and the continuing need for emergency shelter, all throughout the Portland area. If this winter is going to be as bad as some think it is, the current emergency shelters are going to be woefully inadequate-- especially on the East Side. Please pray for us as we try to set up a plan.

Steve Kimes

Facebook Status

11/4/10

I feel very blessed to have met Steve & Diane Kimes on Facebook.

They have a mission to the homeless/formerly homeless in the Portland, Oregon area.  Even though this is something they do in a specific area, their faith, wisdom, and personal experiences can be applied anywhere.

I was especially impressed with a Note that Steve posted on Facebook on November 3, 2010, so I asked his permission to copy and paste it into the body of this blog-entry so that it could be more easily shared.  Permission was granted, so here it is.

After reading it, please check out the links I've shared below Steve's Note that will give you further information about them and the people to whom they minister.

Homeless Awareness #1-- Stop HOBOphobia!

This month is Homeless Awareness Month! Become more aware of the homeless just by reading this note! Pass it on to friends!

Countless times a day, homeless people are rejected, falsely accused, harassed, ticketed, and even beat up, all for the “crime” of not having a roof over their heads or of being dirty or of carrying all their possessions in a backpack. The homeless are treated as the outcast of society, as those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Yet the homeless are not the cause of the evils of our society. Nor are they necessarily the outcome of our evils. The homeless are people—people who want to live and love and hope and work, just like you do. Let us not continue to punish those who are lowly in our society, but help them.

Battle the clichés of the homeless
                The homeless are “us”, not “them”—Many of the homeless are good Christians or children of important citizens. Many of our neighbors and friends have been homeless at one time or another. Homelessness is not an evil, or even necessarily a tragedy—it is a stage of life that many of us have gone through.

                The homeless DO work—While most do not have jobs, they do work hard, some harder than people who have “regular jobs”. It is not easy to get up at 6am to get to dumpsters before anyone else and climb in many of them in order to get recycled cans. Other homeless volunteer at free hot meals and shelters.

               Not all homeless are alcoholics—In general, about one third of the homeless have alcohol or drug abuse problems. Many more have mental health or social difficulties. Many have had tragedies that have overwhelmed them, such as a loss of a job or the suicide of a spouse or family member.

               Not all homeless are criminals or violent—Most homeless abhor the crime and violence done by the few homeless who do because it gets them accused. The homeless have the same percentage of theft and violence as those who are housed.

Teach your children and the community not to hate the homeless.
                The majority of violent crimes against the homeless are done by middle class youth who feel that they have the right to violently fulfill the prejudices of their parents and community. If our youth and community learn that the homeless are human—people like us—then such crimes will be reduced, even eliminated.

Meet and listen to homeless people
                Find out the times and locations of local free meals and sit at the table with the homeless. Find out their real motivations and hopes and desires. You may find that they do not differ that much from your own. Be patient with a homeless person’s oddness—you seem just as odd to them.

Include the homeless in social events
                Invite the homeless to community and church functions. However, because many of them do not believe that they would be welcome, certain assurances must be made:
                It is not necessary to be well-dressed for the function.
                It may be necessary to provide transportation to and from the event.
                An announcement may be necessary to make sure that everyone is accepting of the homeless.

Support benevolence organizations that assist the homeless
                Volunteer at a free meal, give to an organization that helps the homeless, give blankets and clothes to a shelter. Call a local church to find out where you can help the homeless. As you give and volunteer be a friend to those you are helping—seeing and meeting them— not a distant, nameless Benefactor.

Provide opportunities for the homeless
                Provide what the homeless REALLY need—opportunities to shower, socks, clean clothes, an address, a chance to work for money, a chance to do volunteer work for others. Be a friend to the homeless and help them get the resources they need.

glitter-graphics.com

http://www.nowheretolayhishead.org

http://stevekimes.blogspot.com

http://www.facebook.com/AnawimCC

glitter-graphics.com

You've Heard Of Scratch 'n' Smell. . .

2010-10-24T16:08:00.001-04:00

. . .well, this is Shop 'n' Search, Plain 'n' Simple. . .

Shop 'til you drop (or even just a little) and give our youth help and hope by using this link:
GoodShop: http://www.goodshop.com/?charityid=invisible-youth-network

In more of a surfing mood instead of a shopping mood? No problem! Here you go...
GoodSearch: http://www.goodsearch.com/?charityid=invisible-youth-network

Another way you can help us out is to share the link to this blog-entry and/or copy the above links into your e-mails; share them at places such as Facebook; and/or place them on your own websites, blogs, etc.

One more thing: You can also create buttons and banners that are set to help IYN. Find html codes for doing so at the GoodShop/GoodSearch site.

Thanks, in advance, for any help you can give us along these lines.

People are always searching the web. I know that other searches are needed in order to find out some research, but I hope you'll surf for us at least part of the time.

This is also the time of year for various kinds of holiday shopping as well as being the time of year (at least, in my neck of the woods) for thinking about chilly January days when it's so pleasant just to stay inside and curl up with a good book.

If you're an avid reader like I am, books are a wonderful present to give to yourself--as well as making great presents for fellow avid readers on your Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice/Kawanza/Winter Birthdays/Etc. list(s).

You can shop at so many online stores using our GoodShop link.

Here's a little something that will go nicely with a good book.

http://www.mrsmccartneysteas.com

While the site for buying this absolutely-delicious-and-reasonably-priced-silky-teabag-encased tea (with each two-cuppa teabag kept fresh in its own delightful packet until ready to be used) isn't included in GoodShop, a percentage of sales goes to The Linda McCartney Breast Cancer Centre of which more information can be found at the site.

Let me now suggest some very good books. . .

For people who might think that our young people are just spoiled brats who decided to ride their thumbs to San Diego, California from so many parts of the United States because they were bored, didn't like reasonable house rules (e.g. curfew, decibel limits on entertainment, no such animal as limited credit card use, no unisex sleepovers, etc.), thought they looked uncool in the dress code/uniform requirements set by their schools, or some equally-unreasonable reason, think again.

With very little, if any, exception, they chose the streets/outdoors in a place with a relatively-favorable year 'round climate and plenty of secluded places to hide from authorities so that they wouldn't end up in juvie or right back at the place where they had already given up so much of themselves in order to escape because they had good reason to believe that even this kind of life is better than what they chose to leave behind.

These two books (which share definite examples of why kids just might decide that they'd rather be homeless than stay in the status quo) by Jodee Blanco (Please Stop Laughing At Me and Please Stop Laughing At Us) can be found at Amazon. Just go through the GoodShop portal as set up here and do a search for them.

Another book I've recently ordered from Amazon and am waiting to receive is The Woman I Was Born To Be by Susan Boyle. In this book, this now-world-famous singer with the amazing voice and teddy bear angel personality shares what it's been like to be Susan Boyle for almost half-a-century. Sadly, there are incidents of taunting and bullying included in those pages along with the lighter times in her life and the happily ever after part of her life that she's now living.

Could another happily ever after story be waiting to be brought to life among those street kids in San Diego and other communities? Could a person being bullied day in and day out someday shine? Is there somebody out there who can get into the heart of a bully and find out what kind of personal pain is causing him/her to take things out on others?

I believe that the answer has the potential to be a resounding yes--that there are, in fact, thousands upon millions of young people just waiting for their time to be lifted up to where they deserve to be--not necessarily onto a performance stage (though, perhaps, this will prove true for some) but just to a place where they're in a safe place receiving respect, dignity, and care for their most basic needs (and then some)!

I think that the following graphic says it very well when each individual who reads this asks the question: "But what can I--just one person--do to change things?"

glitter-graphics.com

While you're there, you might want to look for books by Roger Dean Kiser. He has written books that inspire, books that entertain, and books that tell it like it is regarding the past of so many boys like himself who ended up as wards of the state of Florida. He has these books on his website as well (which will be shared with you shortly), but I'm hoping to get you to go through our portal to order them so that it will also help IYN along with bringing in money that Roger uses to keep his stories out there (many are there to read for free on his website) along with helping orphans in his neck of the woods.

You can also get Roger's latest book, The Destruction Of Youth at Lulu while using our link as a portal. Let me warn you that, in this book, Roger has pulled out all of the stops.

Amazing Windy City resident, Stuart V. Goldberg wears many hats--and a couple of those hats are novelist and defense attorney. He now has a page-turning character study out now called The One And Only (which he hopes to, someday, turn into a movie). He also has a (more-than-semi-autobiographical) novel manuscript recently finished called The Snake Charmer that he hopes to turn into a movie and--shortly after that--into a book. You can find The One And Only at Amazon. Please use our portal should you decide to buy this book of many twists and turns about an extremely-wealthy man who has an often-unhealthy hunger and thirst for collecting the very best, one-of-a-kind treasures at any or all costs.

From time to time, I'm going to be recommending more books (and other items, too) for you to consider buying while using our portal, but I think that this is a good place to stop--after I share with you an uncanny story about the alphabet and our Founder and Chairman, Russell, along with Roger and Stuart.

In short, did you realize that I met these amazing men in alphabetical order over a time span stretching from early in 2001 into the summer of 2010!?!

I would first notice (as I observed in the first thing I wrote about this phenomenon) that I met them in the order of how their first names would appear in an alphabetical list.

Not long after that, I would notice that this was, also, true of their middle names.

As for their last names. . .alphabetical in reverse!

Again, pretty interesting, to say the least!

I'm leaving you with three blog-entries I've written about this.

Will be returning soon with a different kind of shopping information. . .

ABC Activists

What's So Great About Roger, Russell, and Stuart?

Tribute To A Snake Charmer

From Happy Campers To Jolly Ranchers

2010-10-18T12:54:00.000-04:00

Here is the latest from Russell re: plans for Camp Edge. Sounds like a plan to me, so I hope that you'll pitch in to help in any way that you can. . .

Living on The Edge

The estimate is 4,000 + homeless youth walking the streets of San Diego County, California and living on the edge every day in every way, for example:

“According to the National Conference of State Legislatures Five thousand homeless youth die each year from assault.”

That is equivalent to five high schools of students each year.

For some time the Invisible Youth Network has been kicking around the idea of putting together a camp in North County for the homeless kids of San Diego County, California, in the form of the various camps that you may enroll your kids in during summer break from school, the exception Camp Edge would be open year around.

What we have decided in the meantime is to have a series of fund raisers to purchase a ranch with all of the amenities of a ranch, and run Camp Edge as a ranch.

We can use your help in the following areas of this project:

1. Donations, of course.
2. Help us come-up with fund raising ideas for this project.
3. Help us find a location for Camp Edge.
4. Help us plan-out how Camp Edge will be operated.

Invitation Sent!!! 9/11/10

2010-09-11T12:28:00.000-04:00

Below, find a copy of an invitation I've just sent to friends on my Care2 list who aren't yet members of the representative group for IYN there. Just recently, Russell made a post at said group that conveyed the message that we're marching forward with our mission and are ISO people who are willing and serious about helping us to help our kids.

If you would like to check out our group, please click here.

Scroll on down to read what I've written as an invitation to do so...

Our army is totally-volunteer,
and we don't rely on violent weapons
in our quest of winning a very important war.

Remember how--nine years ago today--so many people were MORE than willing to go onto foreign soil to fight against unspeakable acts of violence that had occurred earlier that morning in New York City, near Washington, D.C., and over some farmland in Pennsylvania?

Are we at least as willing to fight another kind of war right on our very own soil--this time, a war that doesn't involve the spilling of blood but, instead, the extending of hands so that over 1.5 million young people in our country alone might be able to get the help they need to get off the streets.

Not only that, but we also need to implement weapons of prevention so that our invisible youth will have a strong voice against things like abuse (physical, emotional, sexual) going on right in their own homes, bullying at school, and poverty that end up driving them to leave behind their homes and communities in the first place.

Our representative group at Care2 isn't a place for sharing recipes (and such will be removed if posted). However, it might be a place to get inspired to make our recipes to sell at fundraising bake sales and/or directly feed homeless youth.

Please join us in order to become more and more inspired to take action and make this tragic problem history p.d.q.

Yours In The Quest--

Ainsley Jo Phillips

Advisor & Consultant

Invisible Youth Network

In The Meantime. . .

2010-07-03T15:56:00.002-04:00

Note: A Fillet Mignon Love Story will be available for viewing again after my project is finished. For those who haven't read this earlier, it had to be removed due to having an important link to it not going where it should due to blog being temporarily set to private.

A lot has been going on that has distracted me from getting my project done. Hopefully, it will be finished within a week's time--and the sooner the better.

In the meantime, I would like for you to start thinking about what you might be doing in August.

Also, please sign at least one of the following petitions to make Youth Outreach Day a recognized event taking place the second Saturday of every October. . .

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/enact-youth-outreach-day

http://homelessness.change.org/actions/view/enact_youth_outreach_day

http://petitions.tigweb.org/enactyouthoutreachday

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I hope that you're having a great weekend!

Pardon My Dust Again. . .

2010-06-25T12:13:00.000-04:00

This is turning out to be a hectic time for me, so it will be a little longer before the project is finished and A Fillet Mignon Story will be re-posted again. I don't even want to set a timeline, as I really don't know, but I'm hoping that things will be up-and-running by no later than early tomorrow.

Pardon My Dust!!!

2010-06-22T19:42:00.000-04:00

In order to work on a larger project, I've had to remove a couple of blog-entries for awhile. This shouldn't take more than a few hours. When I'm finished, they will be returned to their proper places along with an explanation. Thanks for your patience and understanding. . .

Who Am I?

2010-05-31T06:58:00.000-04:00

Ainsley Jo Phillips from Anderson, Indiana USA

I've been with IYN even before its beginning, having first met Russell on January 15, 2007 at a discussion site called Duno. Therefore, I've watched it grow from a field of dreams to where it is today--and it's still getting better and better!!!

When I was in better health (though my health was starting to deteriorate even at that time so that doing this was a challenge), I could be seen on a regular basis at places like Dollar General and Family Dollar buying various items to be put into flat-rate, shirt-box-size mailing boxes to be sent to Russell for distribution to at least some of the near-4000 young people who are living outside in San Diego. When I went there, to the post office, and to other places as well, I would pass out information sheets about IYN.

Near the end of May 24, 2009, I was taken to ER and was admitted to a room very early on May 25. Diagnosis was lymphedema with a three-bug MRSA infection going on. I was there for a little over a week with follow-up care given (initially) at home and (later) at the clinic.

This is an incurable-but-manageable condition, and I've made a considerable amount of progress in managing it. However--as I'm still in the stage where I'm only wearing bandages instead of shoes--I'm not going in and out of stores these days, though I hope to be before the year is over.

However, I still manage to stay active in IYN as best as I can. One way is to make a regular (pre-programmed) monthly donation. I also still share information with people both online and in real life. This is done in a number of ways with two of those being my chapter website and my IYN-themed blog. Their names are listed below as clickable links...

Sugar Fork Creek Chapter of Madison County

My Helping Hand Journal

I hope that my words here will get across that there's something that nearly everybody can do when it comes to helping with our mission, so I'd like to encourage anybody who happens to read this message to check out our various websites and other examples of online presence and think of one or more ways that you might like to participate in our mission. A countless number of young people in many parts of the third rock from the sun are counting on you!!!

Message From Tj Harris. . .

2010-05-11T23:29:00.000-04:00

Tj is part of IYN's Online Management Team. On top of that, he's also our Advisor & Cousultant. He leads a busy life even beyond IYN activities but still manages to do an excellent job of making sure that things are running smoothly along with getting the word out about us.

He has written something at Care2 about how to do searches and make purchases using igive, and I have copied what he wrote into my notebook.

The advertisement for the book you see with it in my notebook has nothing to do with his announcement except for the fact that it's a book that Russell recommends to be read. If you buy this particular book by clicking on the button, it will also personally help me out. However, I'd like to see you do at least some of your shopping and searching using the igive/isearch links and banner that goes with this entry.

Click here to read!

I'm Passing On Message I Received From Russell. . .

2010-05-02T17:14:00.000-04:00

This is the new IYN advertisement that I have been posting in several San Diego, California classifieds, we have received several responses of people planning to attend.

I just renewed all of these ads today.

This upcoming meeting should go well and give IYN a solid infrastructure in San Diego.

The advertisements will continue and the orientation meetings will continue every month.

In the very near future I will be targeting high schools and colleges.

Just to keep you updated from my end.

Russell

There are an estimated 1.5 homeless children walking the streets of American cities alone, of this 1.5 million there is an estimated 4,000 on any given day walking the streets of San Diego, California where IYN headquarters is located.

The average age of these kids has been determined to be between the ages of nine and fifteen. Each of these kids have their own story of why they are homeless among those stories are throwaway children by parents who could no longer afford them, mental, physical and sexual abuse at home or school.

The kids that are able to survive street life have their own way of surviving chief among them is selling their bodies to survive both female and male, theft and everything thrown in between. Many of these kids do not have a clean set of clothes, no personal hygiene items, no way to shower and go without food for days.

They sleep with the elements, rain, snow, cold, hot, four legged predators and needless to say two legged predators as well. How am I sure of this at the age of nine when my parents deserted me I was one of these kids.

One thing that you can count on with these kids they spend a great deal of time being afraid, scared, lonely and crying.

How can we not be there for these kids in every possible way?

If you are a San Diego, California resident.

The Invisible Youth Network does a monthly orientation for all new volunteer applications where your questions will be answered and you will have a wide choice of available volunteer opportunities.

The orientation for May 2010 is scheduled for Friday, May 14, 2010 between the hours of 5:00 - 7:00 PM on the outside dining area of Beach City Market which is located on the street level facing First Avenue at Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego, California this will include three hours of validated parking in the Horton Plaza Garage.

If you would like to attend this orientation please confirm by return e-mail.

High School Students and College Students are encouraged to participate.

For an overview of the Invisible Youth Network please visit our website at:

Invisible Youth Network Website
http://www.orgsites.com/ca/iyn/

Please help us make a difference in these kids lives!

--
Russell T. Hartsaw

Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network

National Website:
http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/default.aspx

San Diego, California Headquarters Website:
http://www.orgsites.com/ca/iyn

Youth Resource Center
http://www.orgsites.com/ca/invisibleyouth/index.html

514

2010-04-30T06:49:00.001-04:00

May 14 is Russell's "39th" birthday--so let's think of IYN-related ways to celebrate.

I'm going to give you several ideas using the number "514" as the theme.

If you have some kind of entertainment place such as a movie theater, night club, concert hall, etc. you could charge $5.14 admission on May 14 and donate it to IYN.

If you have a pizza place, you could have a "Buy a large pizza for regular price, and get a second one for $5.14!" offer on that day. Of course, the $5.14 from each special offer would be donated to IYN.

If you do runs and/or other forms of thons (e.g. walk-a-thon, rock-a-thon, dance-a-thon), you could have several people pledge $5.14 to be collected by you if you finish your goal.

How fast might you get various business in your community to donate gift certificates to their businesses? These would go into grab bags which could be bought by people for $5.14

This handful of ideas can be adjusted to go in various other directions. Whatever you do, let's do something creative on Friday, May 14, 2010 that has a 514 theme to it and will raise funds for IYN. If you just so happen to have an address that has 514 in it, you might even consider having a get-together to do something such as knit caps for street youth to wear.

Please share this information with others. . .

An added challenge:

If you're reading this, please do what you can to try to get at least 514 more signatures on each of these petitions by or before May 14, 2010. The number to the right of each link shows the number of signatures at the time that I first issued this challenge:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/enact-youth-outreach-day    (160)

http://homelessness.change.org/actions/view/enact_youth_outreach_day     (91)

http://petitions.tigweb.org/enactyouthoutreachday     (14)

This Is NOT The Time For Procrastination!!!

2010-04-08T11:42:00.004-04:00

Sometimes, I think that the word, procrastination, was coined with me in mind.

However, I DO have an excuse for procrastinating: I have so many things going on that they all have to take a number and wait. This means that some things get done promptly, while other things get done not quite so promptly--or not promptly at all. When certain things get done later than sooner, I'm seen by others (and even myself) as procrastinating.

What I'm talking about in this blog-entry is one of those things where there should be no procrastination if at all possible and, if not, as little as possible.

I want to tell you about what it's like living in my skin at this particular moment. It's the skin of a person living with lymphedema--and during one of those not-so-good times that I'm dealing with surface wounds from blistering. In order for these wounds to close before they become deep and infected, I'm having to spend more time in bed than on the computer at this time.

However, I believe that this is something that must be shared here before I can even think of getting back into bed.

In other words I mustn't procrastinate when it comes to sharing this very important message!!!

As I've just said, I know what it's like to live in the skin of somebody who deals with that chronic condition known as lymphedema--or, at least, I know what it's like for me. However, I don't know what it's like to live in the skin of a child-abuser. However, there seems to be plenty of people who have or do live in these skins. I'm also blessed to have never lived within the skin of an abused child--except for on three occasions that I can think of, and none of the abuse came from family members.

Here are those three times:

(1) Hit hard on the top of the head by one teacher when I was four years old.
(2) Hit hard on the top of the head by another teacher when I was nine or ten years old.
(3) Forced (by two teachers) to participate in that dreadful game known as Red Rover.

A little later down the page, I'm going to share a video--and let me warn you that most of the pictures are pretty graphic. They would make my three personal cases of child-abuse look pretty petty in comparison.

However, let me state here that my three cases of child-abuse were neither petty nor trivial.

No child should think "I was only tasered by a cop when I was throwing a tantrum, but it could have been worse, so I have no right to complain."

No child-abuse should be trivialized. No child should be told to suck it up.

Some people think that the solution to stop child-abuse is stiffer prison sentences. There are even some of the "some people" who would like to see the death penalty (which I personally oppose 100% of the time) be a possibility.

While I think that there are people who have gone so far downhill that they need to be restrained in order to keep the rest of society safe, I don't really think in terms of punishment for the sake of punishment--that is, to separate the "good" people from the "bad" people. I'm more interested in making bad behavior stop than I am in the punishment mindset.

Although there will, likely, always be a need to keep some people separated from mainstream society, I think our prisons are far too full of people who have been sent there when problems would have better been solved by resources that didn't involve incarceration.

First, however, we have got to encourage people to take advantage of those resources when they need to.

Here is a favorite resource of mine: Parents Anonymous

Parents who join a local group of this organization get the kind of help they need when it comes to coping with parenthood.

Sounds like a great deal--so, why aren't more child-abusers showing up to take advantage of this?

Simple!

They aren't ready to see themselves as failures when it comes to parenting--and they shouldn't have to!

If they were to go to Parents Anonymous meetings, they wouldn't find a bunch of failures there. Nobody in that organization is interested in finger-pointing, and they don't see these parents as failures or "bad" people.

Most parents don't want to be "bad" people or failures. None of us (parents or not) want to be bad people or failures.

The parents who don't take advantage of organizations like Parents Anonymous when they either feel as if they're about to lose it or else already have are the ones who don't want to have to face the facts that they are bad and/or failures (their own perception of themselves helped along by our judgmental society), so they think, I'll do better next time. However, they end up doing worse, and, now, they're really ashamed.

Instead, they need to think: I'm having these feelings, but that doesn't make me a bad person or a failure. However, I need to get help in coping before I do something to my kids that I'll really be sorry for.

If people would just understand that good people can do bad things, if they don't have the resources to help them through bad patches, they would be more willing to get professional help, and everybody would end up better for it.

April is Child-Abuse Awareness Month. However, we should be aware of this issue and doing what we can to make it stop 24/7 and 365.

If you're having trouble coping, please don't be hesitant to get help.

If you notice that a friend or family member is having trouble coping, do what you can to lighten their load, and show them this page.

When encouraging another person to seek help, talk to them as an equal instead of placing yourself high above them and looking down on them.

You might not have "been there" yourself, but imagine what it would be like to be so overwhelmed that you're ready to take it out on anything that's handy from the cat to the crying baby. If you were to find yourself feeling that way, how would you feel? Likely, that's how the person who's actually feeling that way is feeling.

If we were quicker to extend hands than to point fingers, I believe a lot of child-abuse would never ever get around to happening--and, when it comes to child-abuse, that's an act we should procrastinate on indefinitely!

B-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r. . . These Are NOT Easy Times!

2010-04-01T18:38:00.000-04:00

My mom and I are, currently, experiencing a minor inconvenience at this time.

For quite some time now, we've had quite a struggle at making ends meet. I've just gotten off the phone from paying a bill to reconnect my gas (heat & hot water). Had I been able to afford to do it last week, this could have been done for a fraction of the cost (paying on utility in a gradual way instead of a chunk all-at-once and experiencing no disconnect). However, one week has made a major difference of several hundred dollars. It will be re-connected sometime on Monday. I would have chosen to pay off my mom's first, but she told me that I lived in a more drafty place and she would be fine--and she will be, as she's welcome to spend any nights at my place when it's too cold for her.

In the weeks ahead, we're expecting more money in from various sources, so this is only temporary for us. However, it seems like forever.

Imagine what it would be like if this were more permanent--if we didn't even have places to live.

My dad was an Army brat, so The Great Depression wasn't something that he lived with on an up-close-and-personal basis. My mom grew up in a small village in the southwest part of Central Indiana. She said that they were poor but they didn't even realize it back then. They were never hungry and had enough to share with various neighbors who needed it. As for being cold, they were cold in the usual way of alternating between facing and turning ones back on a stove or fireplace so as to heat different parts of the body at one time.

My folks were both hardworking people who retired from white collar General Motors. I'm a writer--meaning that it might be disputed re: just how hardworking I am. That's all a matter of opinion. I've worked at temporary jobs here and there, but my folks had enough to allow me to pursue my dream of teaching a world via the written word. So far, I've touched hearts and elicited both laughter and tears. I think I've made a positive difference in at least a few lives. However, my career hasn't had me laughing all the way to the bank.

I grew up in middle-class comfort. We never were an extravagant family, but my folks went to Cuba before I was born, and we've all traveled widely in every state except for Alaska as well as in Canada and Mexico.

We've lived on the same farm since early in 1954 (when I was a little over a year old) and in a three-room-and-a-bath apartment before that.

Now, my widowed mom and I have the potential to live very comfortably for the rest of our earthly lives. However--due to a variety of circumstances--this very comfortable lifestyle is still off in the future somewhere.

Even now in the ways that count, we feel very rich, as we have each other along with lots of wonderful friends and relatives, and we enjoy the simple things of life. It doesn't take too much to keep us entertained and happy.

However, for the first time in our lives, we are living in poverty and we know it.

But we also know that there are plenty of people out there who would trade their poverty for ours--that we must seem as rich as Donald Trump to them.

Counting our blessings, we remember that a furnace and water heater DO need a house in order to work. There are no gas meters attached to park benches and cardboard boxes nor are they attached to shopping carts full of a few treasured and/or necessary possessions.

The kind of poverty that has the potential to lead to homelessness isn't something belonging to a fringe group of people who "deserve" (as if it's the right of anyone to point a judgmental finger to proclaim anyone as being deserving of this) to end up like this, thanks to squandering money on booze, tobacco, drugs, and sinful living.

The faces of the poor--and, potentially, homeless--reflect all classes of people, and each individual one of them has a story to tell.

Don't worry about my mom and me. We have a lot of helpful and understanding people in our lives, so we're going to be fine in the long run--and we're still not in the worst shape now when we measure our lives by examples of where we could be.

However, there are people out there who are also good, hardworking people who never expected to ever end up in their current situations any more than we did.

If you come across these people, please help them whenever you can--and, even if you have no material means to help them, you can still help them a whole lot by simply treating them with dignity and compassion.

Please take the time to click on this link and read over the information to which you're taken.

Happy Birthday, IYN!!!

2010-03-26T22:48:00.000-04:00

Today, IYN is celebrating it's third birthday!

Out in San Diego, Russell is (right as I'm writing this) over halfway through our first orientation meeting (which will be held on a regular basis in the future).

Earlier, I designed a Super Poke! Pets habitat for Throw Rug with a theme to go along with the day. Click here to visit a photograph of it.

I would like for more and more people to take a look at our three petitions to make Youth Outreach Day an officially recognized event taking place on the second Saturday of every October. Click here to see details.

One more thing, our fearless leader will be celebrating his "39th" birthday on May 14.

I would like to challenge all of you to make this period of time between March 26 and May 14 as a time to really become familiar with IYN, so please keep checking back with this blog along with going to our website and looking around.

That's all for now. . .

Are You Pro-Life? "Yes!" or "No!"

2010-03-21T08:43:00.002-04:00

Something to think about:

One of the issues that has been getting in the way of getting the new health bill passed has been the allowance of federal funding for abortion.

This says to me that those who have protested this bill on those grounds would answer "Yes!" to the question "Are you pro-life?"

I challenge you to continue to be pro-life, even when the lives you are protecting have gone from being under an inch in all directions and fitting inside of other humans to when those lives are over three feet tall and one foot wide at the widest parts of their bodies and are growing up experiencing homes, neighborhoods, and/or schools that lead them to think that it's better to live out in the elements than to remain in the status quo.

How can we help those young people once they have hit the streets? Ignoring them and hoping that they will go away won't cut it.

How can we help their lives to become better in the first place so that they won't end up choosing to leave?

You've got to remain as pro-life from cradle to grave as you are from womb life to birth!

For those of you who don't see viable life as necessarily beginning at conception, you still can't ignore the fact that not only is that resident of a woman's womb (once he/she can be seen sucking his/her thumb and, in other ways, being a growing baby) very real and worthy of respect (to only be aborted to save the life of the woman carrying him/her) but that he/she is an individual to whom we must commit to provide the basics of life from cradle to grave.

While "basics" don't necessarily include a $50,000 per year pay check, a mansion, a fancy car, a yacht, a time-share, automatic admission to an Ivy League college, designer clothing, and elective surgery (e.g. breast implants, nose-jobs), they do include decent food, clothing, shelter, health care, and education--AND the right to feel safe and respected while going to school instead of having their cries for help re: bullying/taunting ignored.

Please sign this petition to end youth homelessness NOW!!

13, 87, 159

2010-03-19T07:22:00.000-04:00

These (in the order of smallest to largest amount) are the number of signatures (as of the morning of March 19, 2010, at almost 6:30, Anderson, Indiana USA time) on our three online petitions that will be sent to President Obama once we get a minimum of 1000 signatures on each one. We have a little ways to go, but I believe we can increase those numbers greatly even before Invisible Youth Network turns three years old on March 26.

The purpose of this petition is to encourage our President to officially declare the second Saturday of every October from now on to be recognized as Youth Outreach Day.

To learn more about this and to find links to our three petitions, go to:

Three Ways To Give Wonderful Advice To President Obama
Finally, you might also like to check out Countdown To March 26, 2010. Even if you happen to be reading this after that date has come and gone, what's contained within is still relevant.

Btw. . .What are you doing on March 28? In this Facebook Note (open to the public), I've mentioned a little somethng about this. I think at least some of you might find it to be of interest. Hope so!

On this note, I'll close for now! Please keep an eye on these numbers and (hopefully) be amazed at how they will keep turning into bigger numbers!

I Just Called To Say "I Love You!"

2010-03-15T07:57:00.001-04:00

Russell wants everybody to know--so that there can be no mistake about it--the most current contact information for Invisible Youth Network, so I'm copying and pasting it here:

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
940 Park Boulevard, Suite #334
San Diego, California 92101

619-272-9040

invisibleyouth@gmail.com
This same information can be found here:

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/contactus.aspx

along with an on-page form to fill out in case you'd rather contact our headquarters this way.

You will also--at the bottom of the page--find a place you can check in case you would like to be put on our list to be contacted re: IYN activities/news/etc.

One more thing. . .

After drawing you to this blog-entry with my catchy title, it's only fair that I deliver what might have brought you here--though I hope that finding out more about IYN was actually why you arrived here. If not, however, no problem, because you know about us now--and we hope that you'll want to stick around and learn more!

On the other hand, if you know all about IYN but haven't ever checked out this very special and talented guy, I hope you will, as he's one of the most amazing recording artists of our time!

Brad & Angelina--Are You Reading This!?!

2010-03-06T04:13:00.001-05:00

Russell is getting the word out down in San Diego about a project known as TFHY, so I thought that I would "travel" a little ways north to Hollywood and the surrounding area to see if there were any big name celebrities who might be interested in heading down that way to find out how they might be of help.

Actually, you don't have to be a big name celebrity to respond to this calling--just a V.I.P. (very important person). If you are a person, you are very important, so you qualify.

Now, all you have to do is to be able to get down to San Diego and--if you can be in attendance on a regular basis--join this task force. If you can't do that, there are other things you can be doing, depending on your resources. Here are some ideas:

If you're a movie/TV star, elected official, athlete, recording artist, or some other kind of person with "clout," you might want to make some kind of public statement in favor of what we're doing for the simple reason that scores of people know you and, often, like to imitate you.
If you're a reporter and/or documentary maker, you can use your talents to get the word out about our cause and why it's important.
If you're an everyday person with a computer and you have friends in the San Diego area who might want to be part of our task force in some capacity, please e-mail them and share a link to this blog-entry.
If you're a business owner and have something you can donate, please consider donating to some of our 4000 street youth. For example, if you own a clothing store, please take a look at our wish list and donate some items for our kids to wear. If you own a general merchandise store, you might want to donate things such as personal hygiene items, backpacks, blankets, etc. If you're a restaurant owner, would you consider putting on a cook-out for our kids to enjoy?

In short, there's one thing or another that any one of you who happen to be reading this could be doing. Having said that, I'm going to share Russell's memo...

The Invisible Youth Network is in the process of putting together a special project to address the estimated 4,000 homeless youth walking the streets of San Diego, California.

The project will be known as Task Force on Homeless Youth (TFHY).

THFY members will consist of volunteers from the San Diego, California community who will be looking at causes and effects of homeless youth, as well as an array of possible solutions.

THFY members will interview homeless youth and listen to their stories, keeping in mind that each kid has their own story and set of circumstances.

THFY members will interview agencies related to homeless youth and determine their effectiveness.

THFY members will interview law enforcement agencies concerned with homeless youth issues and collect their findings, suggestions and etc.

Our members will meet monthly in downtown San Diego, California, where planning, strategy and implementation will be under discussion.

We will also maintain a supportive website.

Your participation will make a huge difference in the lives of homeless youth.

Russell T. Hartsaw

Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network
http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/default.aspx

Three Ways To Give Wonderful Advice To President Obama

2010-03-01T03:39:00.001-05:00

Below find three petitions to sign that will give wonderful advice to President Obama. You will come to links to these three petitions after you read the wonderful advice that we would like for him to take from us. Please sign any, some, or all. When given the opportunity to leave a comment, it isn't required, but I hope you will, as comments will make our words all that much stronger. If you would share this message with even one friend and ask that friend to do the same, just think of the impact it would make. I believe that, working together, we can collect at least 1000 signatures for each one of these petitions!
Enact Youth Outreach Day

Target:

Barack Obama

The President of The United States

Our Most Amazing Chapter Website To Date

2010-02-28T23:46:00.001-05:00

One of the things that IYN is doing at this time is to encourage interested parties to start chapters in their communities.

You can go here to view some of them. While some don't, most of these chapters have websites to go with them, and each one of those websites is impressive in its own way.

As for myself, I have temporarily reduced my website to two pages: a welcome page and a basic information page. My website actually contains several pages, but I've been dealing with a lot of issues to where it has been hard to focus on getting them finished (some were already finished, but the ones that weren't were starting to stand out like sore thumbs and spoil the whole look).

This week, one of my projects will be getting my website prepared for a grand re-opening. I will be announcing it in this blog when it's really up-and-going.

As I've just said, all of the websites are very good and interesting--and each one unique--but there is one that especially stands out in a crowd, and that's the one designed by Renee Bernheisel of Fulton County, Ohio.

I hope that you will take the time to check it out. Not only is the website BEYONDunique in its make-up but it also shows that a lot of participation has been generated in this area.

It's our dream that our network of chapters will grow until everywhere in the world where kids need extended hands instead of pointing fingers will be covered!

Our Sick Society--And What Is Being/Can Be Done About It. . .

2010-02-28T16:28:00.001-05:00

Russell wrote:

Everytime I watch the news there are reports of children being murdered by their parents, child abuse, children being molested by school faculty, children being shot down on the streets and children being abducted on their way to or from school.

And much more!

What kind of sick society have we become?

If you feel so angry/frustrated/tense that you feel that there's even the slightest chance that you might take it out on your child or a child in your care, please contact Parents Anonymous or (if there isn't one in your area) a similar group that will help you through this rough patch in a sympathetic, non-judgmental way.

Even if you have already lost control and have taken/are taking your issues out on your child/child in your care, don't hesitate to seek help before the situation gets really out-of-hand. There is no shame in letting people know that you need help.

If you or anyone you know have never dealt with issues like these before, consider yourselves to be fortunate and do more than point fingers at those who do. The ills of society will be better solved through the use of extended hands instead of pointing fingers.

We need places for our kids to go and enjoy constructive activities as opposed to being left to their own resources and getting mixed up with gangs.

We need for school to be a safe and positive experience for our kids instead of one of fear, discomfort, and hurt feelings.

We need for our kids to believe--and rightly so--that there are trustworthy people to turn to and that these people will truly listen to what they have to say and do their best to offer them solutions.

We also need for troubled adults (people of any age, in fact) to know that it's okay to ask for help when dealing with negative, antisocial emotions--and we need to make sure that there are places out there where they can turn and know that they will be seen/treated as people with issues that they need help in solving instead of being seen as "bad" people.

I've said many times, and I'll say it again that it's good to imagine that you have two grown children who are both loved dearly, unconditionally, and in equal measure by you. One is the victim of a terrible crime, and the other one has committed a terrible crime. Think about what outcome you would want for each of them, and you will be well on your way to designing a society that offers real solutions to the problems we face.

Put your prayers, love, positive thoughts, time, money, and good words behind organizations such as Parents Anonymous, Invisible Youth Network, Operation Respect, Boys & Girls Clubs Of America, and others that are offering positive and empowering solutions to a troubled world!

Countdown To March 26, 2010

2010-02-26T14:34:00.005-05:00

The following message was originally posted as a discussion topic at the IYN group at Care2.

As of this posting, we are a month away from the third anniversary of when Invisible Youth Network was launched.

Let's make this a month of conscious celebration and action. Here are some things we can be doing--some on a daily basis, others on a frequent basis, and others at least once--during the days leading up to our anniversary day (and nobody would be unhappy if you keep on doing any/some/all of them even after March 26, 2010 has come and gone).

This is addressed to all 2408 of our current members--plus any who might happen to come along afterwards. . .

Visit our website (http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net) and take note of what we're all about.
Share a link to our website with your friends and encourage them to visit.
If you can afford to, donate. You will find out how by going here: http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/helpushelp.aspx Take note that there are subdivisions to this initial link that need to be checked out. These will give you ways to donate while shopping and (which is especially good for those, like myself, who can only afford to donate occasionally) fun activities to do that will result in the receiving of donations from sponsors.
Encourage your friends to check out this information on how to donate/cause donations to happen.
Sign--and, of course, encourage friends to sign--our petitions that will be sent to President Obama to encourage him to endorse Youth Outreach Day as an official event that will take place on the second Saturday of each October. To find out more about this, go here: http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/YouthOutreachDay.aspx
Invite others to the various IYN groups at social sites of which you're a member. If you're not a member of these groups, consider joining any, some, or all. You can find them listed (among other things) on our online directory page which you can access by going here: http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/Onlinedirectory.aspx
Get creative in your approach to promoting IYN and its mission. You can find some ideas for this by going here: http://mhhj.blogspot.com/2010/02/fun-and-creative-ways-to-help-our-cause.html
Look into the idea of starting a community chapter. You can do this on your own and/or get others in your area interested in this. You can find information about this--plus check out some already-established chapters--by going here: http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/communitychapters.aspx
Feel free to share this message in e-mail, either by linking to it or copying and pasting it (or both). Besides initially posting it here at our group at Care2, I'm posting it other places as well (for starters, as an entry in the blog I'm keeping about IYN http://mhhj.blogspot.com/2010/02/countdown-to-march-26-2010.html) and/or sharing links to it. Feel free also to share links to it on places such as blogs, websites, sig-blocks, and profile pages.
Are you a crafty person? Do you like to bake? Do you like to wash cars? Are you musical? Do you play sports? Are you otherwise talented? Do you enjoy participating in thons? Do you enjoy holding yard sales? These are some of many ways that you can raise funds for IYN.

These are just a few of many ways that you can help our cause, and all of us at IYN--and, especially, our countless number of young people needing extended hands instead of pointing fingers--are counting on you!

Blessings!
Ainsley Jo Phillips
Management Team
Invisible Youth Network
Chapter President
Sugar Fork Creek Chapter of Madison County

Fun And Creative Ways To Help Our Cause

2010-02-26T14:13:00.004-05:00

This is a page I'm working on to go along with another page of information. It has been posted unfinished for the purpose of creating a link to be used on the other page of information to take people to this page when it's finished. It should have the content on it that it's meant to have on it before too long. . .

Street Outreach & Wish List

2010-02-23T10:21:00.001-05:00

Note: The Donate button copied and pasted with the rest of Russell's message doesn't work in the body of this blog-entry, but you can visit our site to find one that does.

Being that the Board of Directors at their February 19, 2010 meeting placed high on their priority list our Street Outreach Program, I want to share with you what we have been providing these street kids in the form of survival supplies as these resources are available.

As listed on our website under donations:

Think about the number of homeless children walking the streets of our cities. They are facing the elements of street life every day and night, in every way. They are alone, afraid and hungry. Think about how you would feel if it were you, your child, or grandchild. Many of these youth attempt to survive living alone on the streets day to day. To assist them we provide them with the following resources when available:

Backpacks

Bedrolls

Drinks, pouches only

Feminine hygiene products

Gift Cards for fast food restaurants, in $5.00 denominations

Hand Wipes, antibacterial

Hooded Sweatshirts, (Medium & Large)

Knit Hats

Nonperishable food Items

Shorts, (Medium and Large)

Travel Size Hygiene Items

Sleeping Bags

Socks

T-shirts

Wallets to hold their identification

Water Bottles

We are asking you to join our Wish List and invest $5.00 a month to help us make a difference in the lives of these kids. Just $1.25 a week, that’s less than one medium latte, or a burger and fries. I know you are wondering how just $5.00 could make a difference, it can make an amazing difference if enough people like you are willing to make a small investment in these kids lives.

You can make your "Wish List" donation online by credit card , or by mail to:

Invisible Youth Network
940 Park Boulevard, Suite #334
San Diego, California 92101

c/o Russell T. Hartsaw

Many of these supplies can be accuulated throught special drives through churches, colleges and High Schools and of course merchant donations.

We need to start assigning new volunteers to this program.

I have a local merchant who is a friend of mine who has offered storage space if needed. And of course we always have the option of a self storage unit.

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/default.aspx

Street Children

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSH9jlFMnEI

Tell Me Whyhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro6kaQEYe2I

Now Being Sent Out To San Diego Media & Craig's List

2010-02-22T20:49:00.001-05:00

Earlier today, I received a copy of something that Russell is sending out to all of the major medias in San Diego, California and is posting on Craig's List as well.

The purpose of this is to bring to light what is needed on a local level. However, IYN is an international organization with a mission to provide help wherever it's needed and however we can.

Of course, we can only do so much, but we'd like to do as much as possible. Much of what we're able to do depends on you the reader.

Donations help, setting up local chapters helps, and continuing to spread the word about us helps.

Please read what's posted below and contact us to find out what you can do!

In the next few minutes this will be sent out to all of the major medias in San Diego, California, including posted on craigslist.

Are you familiar with our organization, Invisible Youth Network, which was officially launched on March 26, 2007 for the purpose of reaching out to homeless youth.

If not, you might want to become familiar with us by visiting our main website at: http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net

We are currently focusing our efforts towards providing an estimated 4,000 homeless youth walking the streets of San Diego, California a youth drop in center and emergency shelter, where they will have their immediate needs addressed and where they will have access to partner resources which will help them develop the skills necessary to become a responsible and productive members of the community and society as a whole.

We are actively seeking sponsorships and partnerships, and expanding our Board of Directors and street outreach to include new members, that be you!

These young people have been failed by the adults and the systems that were supposed to protect them. We can't undo their histories, but we can give them the support and tools to have a successful future.

This is an opportunity to make a positive difference and impact in the lives of San Diego's homeless youth.

How we differ from other organizations:

We have no paid positions, everyone is a volunteer.

We have no fancy offices or expense accounts, all volunteers work out of their home/offices.

90% of all donations go to our projects and programs.

10% of all donations go to operational expenses.

Our founder & Chairman Russell T. Hartsaw is a former homeless youth, gang member and has spent 44 years of his life incarcerated. He has been there and done that, in the process he has witnesses many youth destroyed.

For further information please contact us at invisibleyouth@gmail.com or call 619-272-9040.

Mark February 24, 2010 On Your Calendar! Why? Details Below. . .

2010-02-18T11:01:00.000-05:00

Hi Supporter,

Over the last several months, we've tried something new (a series of time-
sensitive challenges) to
help Invisible Youth Network and all the causes listed at iGive. It's
worked better than we ever expected. To date,
we've donated over $10,000 as a result of these challenges. So we've
cooked up another challenge.

This time we're making a change suggested by many of your peers. We're
giving you
ADVANCE NOTICE of the upcoming challenge to allow time to prepare your
notifications to your supporters,
if you decide to participate.

*************************************************************************
SPECIAL CHALLENGE NOTIFICATION
The 24 hour, $1 per new member special challenge begins Wednesday, February
24, 2010 at noon Chicago time.
That is about one week from the date this e-mail was sent to you.
SPECIAL CHALLENGE NOTIFICATION
************************************************************************

To make this work for Invisible Youth Network, it'll require your
participation, but it is free and definitely easy.

********************************************
IMPORTANT OVERVIEW

For each person who joins iGive using the special link below AND visits a
participating iGive store
(there are over 700 stores (from Amazon to Zazzle, eBay to HSN and QVC) at
iGive) via iGive
between noon, Wednesday February 24, 2010 and 11:59 a.m., Thursday,
February 25, 2010,
we'll give Invisible Youth Network a dollar.

********************************************

5,000 new members, $5,000. No purchase necessary. That's 5,000 new
members for all causes, not just
yours, so it's a bit of race.

Of course, if these new members search more (or buy something at an iGive
store) they'll earn even more
money for Invisible Youth Network. Right now, we're donating a special
bonus of $5 for that first purchase plus the
usual percentage, on top of this $1 special challenge.

Here's where you come in. The only way Invisible Youth Network will get
new supporters and that free $1 (or more)
is if you invite them. Send your friends, family, and colleagues the
following link in an e-mail, tweet it, chirp it, do a
Facebook posting, put up posters, shout from mountain tops (you know the
drill) and let them know you think
Invisible Youth Network is pretty cool and deserves their support,
especially since it's free! You can even just forward
this e-mail.

This is the link:
http://www.igive.com/welcome/warm_reg_promo.cfm?c=54858

We've made tons of improvements recently, so we want lots of people to try
it out and put it to the test.
If they keep on searching or shopping after testing us out, so much the
better for Invisible Youth Network .

The details:
- Offer active between noon, February 24, 2010 and 11:59 a.m.,
Februrary 25, 2010 (Chicago time).
- New members only (never have been an iGive member previously). All
the normal rules of membership, searching, and purchasing apply, our site
has the details. Real people only, who sign themselves up. It's not fair
to hire a room full of elves who sign people up, the new member has to sign
him or herself up.
- Once we've given away $5,000 to all causes combined, the offer ends.
- The special link is important. No link, no $1.
- Visiting a store via iGive is crucial. No visiting a store via
iGive, no $1.

That's it. Don't forget to try our search yourself
(http://isearch.igive.com) as well as checking out the over 700 stores.
You may need to login or register first (personally, as an iGive member).
We sent you this e-mail because you're in our records as the cause contact,
not as a member personally.

Want to see how your group is doing, both towards the 5,000 member goal and
in general? Once the challenge starts, you can see stats at:
Visit http://www.iGive.com/html/causestats.cfm

Warmly,

Robert N. Grosshandler
Founder

ISO--You!!!

2010-02-06T20:12:00.003-05:00

Hello!

Thank you for taking the time to read this note where I give you the latest on the happenings of IYN.

For starters, we are revamping our online presence to make it more effective and are doing away with some offices and/or keeping them for a time when we can find people who can fill them better (with the exception of the ones we decide are necessary at this time and are already being filled by people who fit the job description).

For example, I was given the title of Deputy Chairman of Public Relations, but I'm really not administrative material, so, if Russell decides that this position is a keeper, I won't be the one filling it in the future, and I'm very okay with that. For one thing, it makes my sig-block look less busy.

However, that's just one small matter. The BIG matter is how to make IYN step outside of the computer and into the real world more. We're still keeping our online presence, but the kids we serve don't live inside of a computer. They are out in the real world, and Russell has written about this so well that I've made his words into blog-entries that can be found by going here and here.

We are looking for people who are able to do any, some, or all of the following:

Keep us in your prayers and/or positive thoughts.
Send us cash donations and/or items we have listed on our wish list. To find out more about this, go here and here.
Use your special talents to help us in our mission. For instance, if you can knit, our young people could use some stocking caps. If you can quilt, make one or more one-person-sized quilts. If you're a musician, consider staging a benefit concert. If you're a member of the medical profession (e.g. doctor, nurse, dentist), donate part of your time to caring for our street kids. If you're a writer and/or blogger write about us--and we appreciate your sharing information about us in your e-mails as well.
Go here to find out how to become a mentor.
When you looked at our donation link, did you also notice the opportunities to help raise funds for our mission by doing things that you probably do already such as making purchases online and surfing the internet? Consider doing this at least part of the time when you shop and/or surf. We also have other ways where you can raise funds by doing what comes naturally such as playing online games. When we post something like this, please check it out.
Consider starting an online chapter in your area that will get both local and global issues "out there" to a greater number of people. You can check out the chapters that have already been set up--plus get more information about starting your own--by going here.
If your community has a population of street youth, put together an outreach group and go out to bring things they might be able to use to them--meaning things such as food, food cards, store cards, personal hygiene items, clothing, backpacks, blankets, etc. and, most importantly, a non-judgmental listening ear.
Sign any or all of our petitions to make it official that Youth Outreach Day takes place on the second Saturday of every October (details here and here) as well as organizing/encouraging others in your community to organize special activities on that day.
Finally, feel free to contact us with your own ideas. We can always tell you that it won't work with us and why--though we're open to most ideas just so long as the best interests of our youth wouldn't be compromised. For example, we have no place for those judgmental, bullying boot-camps or that kind of mentality. These young people have been hurt and put down enough already, and this kind of thing is the last thing they need happening in their lives.

Thanks, again for taking the time to read this, and we hope to be hearing from you soon!

Blessings!

Ainsley Jo Phillips
Founding Member & Public Information Officer
Invisible Youth Network
Chapter President
Sugar Fork Creek Chapter of Madison County

glitter-graphics.com
When love is shared, it increases instead of decreasing.

Reality Check From Russell

2010-02-06T17:21:00.001-05:00

There are an estimated 1.5 homeless children walking the streets of American cities alone of this 1.5 million there is an estimated 4,000 on any given day walking the streets of San Diego, California where IYN headquarters is located. The average age of these kids has been determined to be between the ages of nine and fifteen.

Each of these kids have their own story of why they are homeless among those stories are throwaway children by parents who could no longer afford them, mental, physical and sexual abuse at home or school.

The kids that are able to survive street life have their own way of surviving chief among them is selling their bodies to survive both female and male, theft and everything thrown in between.

Many of these kids do not have a clean set of clothes, no personal hygiene items, no way to shower and go without food for days.

They sleep with the elements, rain, snow, cold, hot, four legged predators and needless to say two legged predators as well.

How am I sure of this at the age of nine when my parents deserted me I was one of these kids.

One thing that you can count on with these kids they spend a great deal of time being afraid, scared, lonely and crying.

How can we not be there for these kids in every possible way.

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/default.aspx

Putting Things In Perspective Hoosier-Style

2010-01-24T01:53:00.002-05:00

In order to understand more what it's like in Haiti, imagine the entire city of Indianapolis

plus some of the outlying areas

being reduced to ruins with countless people dead and/or injured.

That would pretty well describe the extent of the tragedy and damage over in Port-Au-Prince, the capital of Haiti.

In order to get a handle on the death toll (estimated as being anywhere from 70,000 to 250,000), imagine that--at the very least--all of the people living in Anderson are now dead, plus some from near-by communities as well. Imagine that it could be possible that all of the people living in Madison County are now dead--and that there is death happening outside the boundaries of the county as well.

Imagine a death-toll so great that having proper funerals and burials

is seldom, if ever, an option--meaning that the alternative will be mass disposal of unidentified, rotting human remains...

Imagine surviving an earthquake that has taken place in Indianapolis and knowing that the help you needed to continue to survive is so close but yet so far away

--kept from you by a combination of traffic jams and fear that, by the time people got to you to help you, you will have gone stark-raving mad so that you would attack them (even if you were showing few if any signs of doing so).

Imagine being young--only a couple of years past your high school graduation--

and being shot in the back by trigger-happy police because they thought you were looting when you really weren't (And what if you WERE looking for food to eat from items that were going to go to waste if somebody didn't eat them?). One more thing. . .How did those police ever find the time to shoot you when they were, just days ago, too busy to come and help you and others to get to a better location instead of just leaving you to fend for yourselves?

Imagine this--and please open up your heart and your pocketbook and give to these hurting people!

*A very special thanks to the many people whose photographs I found with a Google search and used to make the reality of Haiti after the earthquake hit home with more impact.

Let's Make Being Judgmental OUT Instead Of IN

2010-01-14T02:45:00.001-05:00

Below, find three of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone that deal in one way or another with being too quick to pass judgment on others instead of taking the time to understand them.

The first episode involves judging people due to their outward appearance. Our homeless youth have often run away from situations where they are bullied over everything from outward appearance to their beliefs.

Final note about this episode: Actually, the people in the first episode were very compassionate toward their grotesquely-deformed patient. But could they have gone a little farther and questioned why this person had to be separated from the rest of mainstream society just because she hadn't been blessed with good looks like they had? How about us? Do we try to change what needs to be changed or just take the easy route and allow things to remain status quo?

The next episode has to do with a mad scientist who has set up some kind of invention to weed out all of the "evil" people in the world. He will end up being very surprised when his machine is put into action.

The final episode has to do with persecuting somebody who is different instead of taking the time to find out what they're all about. A community learns (too late) a very important lesson when they take the former route instead of the latter.

Too often, our homeless youth get judged by people who haven't walked a mile in their shoes and don't know where they're coming from. Will you take a different route than the one that gets taken too often?

Love, Spaghetti, Health, & Shelter--Too Often Taken For Granted. . .

2010-01-11T13:00:00.000-05:00

First off, I would like to share the very good news that one of our favorite volunteers is home from the hospital and enjoying his mom's home cookin'--and, especially, her spaghetti! Because of this modest, young man's request for privacy at this time, I'll just leave it at that.

Actually, I can't just leave it at that, because there's a very eye-opening story here meant to be shared, so I'm going to sum it up without giving away many details:

I'm talking about somebody who is just out of his teens--and started doing what he's doing now while still in his teens.

He lives about an hour away from a big city and has been spending a lot of his time caring for his sick and elderly dad. He is the primary caretaker. However, he does take out a little down time when he can and will go to this big city for the purpose of finding fun things to do (e.g. concerts, movies, sporting events, etc.)--that is, this was his original purpose for visiting the city.

However, he has found a greater purpose that is more meaningful to him than all of those youthful pursuits put together, having discovered that there were several homeless youth in the city trying to survive on their own.

He has since spent most of his big city time doing what he can to provide for them--and even empower them to help themselves.

He now runs races through the streets of the city in order to raise funds. It has been his habit to keep half the funds to be used locally and send the other half to Invisible Youth Network's headquarters.

Russell has tried to encourage him to keep 100% of the funds for the young people whom he has set out to help. He will sometimes, but he just can't seem to put it out of his mind that the problem of homeless youth isn't just happening in that big city to where he goes.

You will find, when it comes to the homeless population, many will hide away in the shadows and trust few, if any, members of mainstream society due to being persecuted by them in the past.

There are others who have mustered up enough courage to go out to get what supplies they can--enough for both themselves and those hiding in the shadows.

How do they come by these supplies?

Sometimes, they find them in trash cans (food) and (other supplies) out on the curb to be picked up by the trash collectors. At other times, they will shoplift. Still other times, they will pay for the food and other survival supplies with money they've earned themselves through a combination of hustling (prostitution) and panhandling (until they get chased away or arrested).

Occasionally, they will actually find somebody with no hidden agenda who will donate food and survival supplies to them--just sees a need and wants to help.

Such a person is the young man of whom I'm now writing.

I mentioned that he has even gotten them participating in a positive activity to earn some money--and that is getting them to join him in running races.

They have gotten to be a regular sight as they run through the city. Not only do they collect pledges in advance, but people also line the streets and toss coins to them.

Some even come up to them and hand them gift cards to stores and fast-food restaurants.

The only thing that this special young man hasn't been able to supply is shelter. He can afford to listen to them, as listening is free, and he can afford to buy them food and supplies as he gets the money to do so.

However, most of these street kids sleep in parks and on rooftops when the weather is warm and dry. At other times, many manage to find at least temporary shelter from the elements by staying for awhile in somebody's house or apartment.

Unfortunately, the majority of these people want something unsavory in return for the deed.

The weather gets very cold where this young man lives, and, this year, the cold has been more bitter and prolonged.

Just recently, he went to check on his street kids even though his chronic health problems were kicking in. Perhaps, by buying them some coffee and other food in a 24 hour restaurant, he could give several of them an alternative warm spot to spend a few hours.

He never made it there. Unable to drive a car, he gets to and from there by a combination of walking and riding his thumb. He was found unconscious--passed out on the sidewalk--and taken to the hospital. It was touch-and-go for quite awhile, but many prayers and loving thoughts were going out for him.

At this time, we who know and love him are celebrating his being home and eating spaghetti--but not forgetting those who have no home to go to. . .

I have so much more to share, but I'm going to limit it some, or I will never get this blog-entry done.

Things are "chuggin' right along" (as Uncle Kermit likes to say about his 83-years-young self and asking others if they are, too) at IYN, and I believe that 2010 is going to be a very positive year for us in a whole lot of ways!

As for myself, I've recently turned the ownership of our Care2 group over to Tj and have also (for now, anyway) stepped down from hosting there. He's already doing an A+ job of making much-needed improvements re: this group, and this gives me more time to focus on other aspects of IYN, such as keeping this blog current (and, in other ways, getting the written word out about IYN); continuing to serve to the best of my abilities as IYN's Deputy Chairman of Public Relations (which involves the aforementioned plus more) along with finding ways to carry out my duties as such more efficiently; serving on our management team; and my latest endeavor: starting a local chapter of IYN

At this time, the chapter website is a work-in-progress. In some ways, it will always be such, as there will be some static parts to it, but there will also be changes to keep up with everything from the seasons to the latest news. There is still a lot of construction work going on now, but I think it would be well worth your time to take a look--but don't make it your last look, as I'm, currently finishing unfinished articles, adding information, and creating new pages (for starters).

I also have plans on taking a mentoring course from Michele. In fact, I'm already enrolled but am waiting to get some other ducks in a line before I become an active student. I hope to start doing my studies by sometime in February at the latest.

If you want to check out this free-of-charge course, you can find it listed on down the page, as I'm going to be posting the latest version of IYN's online directory at the end of this entry so that you can easily check out several of the many places where you can find vestiges of our mission in Cyberspace, and this directory includes a link to the course.

One more thing about Michele. She has not only started a very active chapter in Puerto Rico, but she has also been the first person to create an IYN website (the one going with her chapter) in a foreign language (Spanish). Click here to check it out!

As many of you know, we at IYN are trying to get Youth Outreach Day eventually recognized as a global event that takes place on the second Saturday of every October, so we are inviting people from all parts of the world to sign at least some--if not all--of the petitions we have circulating here in Cyberspace (which will be added to in time, no doubt).

There are even some hard-copy petitions being circulated in "real life." If anyone approaches you with one, please don't hesitate to sign.

Some petitions have an option of also leaving a comment as to why this is important to you.

Just your signature is sufficient, but a comment about why such a day of recognition and celebration of our youth would be a true blessing would give the petition you're signing a little more "OOMPH!"

One thing I'm doing involves my SuperPoke! Pet, Throw Rug (an adorable, little bunny rabbit).

At this time, I have her and her friends in a habitat that has two indoor scenes and two outdoor scenes, and they're still putting up Christmas decorations. Among those Christmas decorations are the following:

brown gingerbread cookies, buttery gingerbread cookies, white snowflakes, pinkish-red snowflakes, mint-green snowflakes, and candy canes.

For every ten signatures going on an online petition (starting with 150 at the original one through Care2 and with 10 at the other ones), another one of those special decorations will go up (sometimes, one-by-one and, at other times, several at once).

This habitat will be in place until President Obama has been in office for a year--after which a special celebration one will be put in place. We hope by then to have collected at least 1000 signatures on at least one of the petitions--and all would be nice--so that we can send it/them on to the President.

Even when a petition has reached 1000 signatures, there's nothing wrong with collecting even MORE signatures on it. That's one advantage of a Cyberspace petition: It can keep on collecting signatures, even after it's reached its destination!

If you would like to check out Throw Rug's habitat from time to time, you can click on this link:

http://ainsleyjo.spp.com

The story behind this habitat is that Throw Rug participated in Youth Outreach Day last October at Peaceful Park.

While she was there, she got to make friends with some homeless youth and decided that she was going to stay in the park with them until 140 signatures were collected on the initial petition. That took longer than anticipated, so she ended up just barely making it home in time for Christmas.

When she got home, she invited her friends (both old friends and her newfound homeless friends) to come to a Christmas party at her place.

From there, they went on a vacation together--but what the homeless kids didn't know was that the place where they were going was actually a new residence. They would be staying on there for as long as they needed a roof over their heads!

Now, they are drawing out Christmas and still decorating their place.

However, they will be leaving there for a trip to see President Obama when he has been in office for a year and will be having a party in a very patriotic-looking habitat.

After this story plays out, Throw Rug will be put into another habitat--which might or might not have an IYN storyline behind it.

However, Throw Rug and I both endorse IYN and hope that, someday, this wonderful organization can bring in enough donations so that safe, happy, and healthy places to stay will become a reality for our kids.

In SuperPoke! Land we can create Happily Ever After endings to our stories--but that doesn't always reflect what's going on out in the real world. . .

Thanks for reading this far. Just two more subjects to discuss until my next blog-entry.

The first one is including an invitation to sign our petitions, and the next one is posting our most current online directory. . .

These petitions give voice, visibility, and vision to homeless and/or otherwise at-risk youth.

Please sign any or all of them!!!

http://petitions.tigweb.org/enactyouthoutreachday

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/enact-youth-outreach-day

http://www.change.org/actions/view/enact_youth_outreach_day

Thanks, in advance, for making a positive difference!

______________________________________________

IYN Online Directory

Contact Information:

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
invisibleyouth@gmail.com

Wayneho Kam
Deputy Chairman - Operations
wk13@duke.edu

Where We Can Be Found:

Angels for Street Kids Chapter - 1,059
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=43196194633&ref=mf
Change Org. - New
http://www.change.org/
Friends of Invisible Youth - 3,164
http://www.facebook.com/rhartsaw?ref=profile
Friends of Invisible Youth - 178
http://invisibleyouth.gaia.com
Helping Hands for IYN @ Care2 - 2,391
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/IYN
Invisible Youth Cause @ Facebook - 194
http://apps.facebook.com/causes/?m=7b39c83d
Invisible Youth @ Facebook - 1,121
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=51667072778
Invisible Youth @ GAIA - 89
http://groups.gaia.com/homelessness
Invisible Youth @ Twitter - 65
http://twitter.com/invisibleyouth
Invisible Youth Member's Club - 299
http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/iynmembersclub
Taking IT Global - 687
http://profiles.tigweb.org/TheChairman

Invisible Youth Network Online Campus:

Online Mentor Training - 27
http://invisibleyouthonlinetrai.groups.live.com/

Positive Youth Development - 11
http://positiveyouthdevelopment.groups.live.com/

Starting Your Own Chapter - 15
http://startingyourownchapter.groups.live.com/
Youth Internship Program - 7
http://youthinternshipprogram.groups.live.com/

Resources / Online programs:

Online Management Team - 8 http://managementteam.groups.live.com/

Online Partnership Community - 35
http://invisibleyouthonlinecomm.groups.live.com/

Special Projects:

Senior Advocates of San Diego, California
http://www.orgsites.com/ca/senioradvocates

Website Information:

Child Abuse Services
http://childabuse.services.officelive.com/default.htm

IYN Parent Resources
http://iynparentresources.webs.com/
Invisible Youth Mentoring
http://www.iynmentoring.webs.com/
Invisible Youth Resource Center
ttp://www.orgsites.com/ca/invisibleyouth/index.html

Invisible Youth Website
http://www.InvisibleYouthNetwork.net

Total Member's Count: 9,350

Updated: January 6, 2010

John Lennon Said It So Well

2009-12-31T18:08:00.000-05:00

The late great Beatle once expressed in song that life is what happens to us while we're busy making other plans.

I can relate to that very well.

Between a whole lot of other things, I've been working on setting up a local (as in Madison County in Indiana) chapter of Invisible Youth Network, and I thought for sure that I would have it done before now.

Although there are obvious places showing that it really isn't grand-opened in the style for which I'd originally planned, I believe it's still presentable enough to go ahead and show around.

One thing I know for sure:

God willing and my computer doesn't fizzle, I know how I'll be spending at least part of the first day of 2010:

Adding tons more finishing touches to the website.

Tonight--as I will be--you're probably out celebrating tonight anyway and might not even check it out until next year (which, as of this posting, is about six hours away, Anderson, Indiana time).

However, in case you're in and want to take a look, this is its url:

http://www.iynpenlady.com/

On this note, I will close and wish you and yours a wonderful 2010!!!

Off-Topic?

2009-12-24T14:10:00.001-05:00

Afternoon of December 24, 2009:

It's incredible how quickly this year has gone by! At this time, I don't even have the time to explain what this blog-entry is all about. That will be happening a little bit later in the day. . .

Evening of December 31, 2009

This entry will be finished next year. . .

(to be continued. . .)

Christmas In San Diego, California 2009!!!

2009-12-15T02:22:00.002-05:00

glitter-graphics.com

Christmas In San Diego, California

San Diego, California is the home to an estimates 8,000 homeless kids, estimated by our medias.

We have 4,000 between the ages of 9 - 18 and 4,000 between the ages of 18 - 21. These kids choose San Diego because of our nice weather year round.

I am pleased to announce that I have put together Christmas for these homeless kids.

We have three churches each that is going to have Christmas festivities for these kids. Church buses will be sent-out to pick-up the kids and they will be taken to one of the three churches where they will be surrounded by the Church's congregation, music, food, games and gifts.

We (the churches and I) have recruited several local merchants to participate in this event.

Each kid will receive a back pack filled with nonperishable food items, travel size hygiene items, a bed roll and gift cards for McDonald's and Target.

The games will have cash prizes.

These events will be open to the public and is being advertised, so we expect much more for the kids.

This will be an all day event and I will be making my rounds to all three of the churches.

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network
http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net

Russell T. Hartsaw

2009-11-15T17:07:00.000-05:00

Dedicated to a very special guy!

Entry under construction...

When finished, it will tell you what's so amazing about IYN's Founder and Chairman...

Legal Status Of Invisible Youth Network (IYN)

2009-11-10T07:00:00.000-05:00

The Invisible Youth Network is a Nonprofit Corporation and we have members touching down on every continent.

The Invisible Youth Network was organized under Internal Revenue Service Publication 1828, Page 3, and is a Nonprofit, Charitable Organization, we have 501 (c) 3 status.

Employer Identification Number:

11-3815799

With the following exceptions:

We have no paid positions, everyone is a volunteer.
We have no fancy offices or expense accounts, all volunteers work out of their home/offices.
90% of all donations go to our projects and programs.
10% of all donations go to operational expenses.
You may specify how you want your donation used, and or we will discuss with you how your donation will be used upon request.
Any and all accrued expenses, has a receipt on file.
On the drawing board is publishing a bi-annual donation report.

Our headquarters is located at:

Invisible Youth Network
940 Park Boulevard, Suite 334
San Diego, California 92101

619-239-0101, #334

invisibleyouth@gmail.com

San Diego, California Registration Compliance

Fictitious Business Name Statement:
2009-018291

Business Tax Certificate:

2009015762

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network

Website:

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/default.aspx

Old Care2 Bulletin Board

2009-11-01T22:45:00.002-05:00

I'm getting ready to change the bulletin board at our Care2 group, so I want to place the contents of the old one here...

OUR MISSION STATEMENT

Invisible Youth is an expansive online network that provides resources and support for an estimated 1.5 million homeless at risk youth. Our influence is felt every day in cities all across America. Our mission is carried out through both partner organizations and volunteers who take to the streets to find, stabilize and otherwise help homeless and at risk youth to improve their quality of life.

Our focus reaches past the streets and lends itself to deterrence, research, resources, seminars, training and workshops that are provided to the communities and via the Internet. Despite our motto “Advocating for America’s Youth,” our endeavors are focused on all homeless and at risk youth with no regard to their geographic location. Mahatma Gandhi said, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world,” and with that in mind, The Invisible Youth Network envisions better lives for children who cannot see it themselves.

OUR VISION

America's youth should not be homeless.

Homeless youth issues need to be addressed.

The Invisible Youth Network needs to form partnerships to address homeless youth issues.

The Invisible Youth Network needs to develop a strong membership base, that endorses our efforts on behalf of homeless youth.

To learn more, please visit our websites and online directory...

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net

http://www.orgsites.com/ca/invisibleyouth

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/Onlinedirectory.aspx

To feel more, please watch these videos...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVEUJr-o0KY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2tkpFHeUaU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enRTVzRQ4xU

and view more videos by going here...

http://www.orgsites.com/ca/invisibleyouth/_pgg6.php3

If everybody here gave even as little as a dollar per month ($12 per year), it would make a wonderful difference.

If each of you went a step further to tell 12 friends, encourage them to give a dollar per month, and ask them to do the same with 12 friends of their own, the difference would be even MORE amazing!

And what if your 12 friends would carry this act of kindness on in like manner, and so on and so forth...

Just like ripples in a pond...

Can you imagine!?! ...............................

To learn more about donating, please visit these two places...

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/helpushelp.aspx

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/ourwishlist.aspx

There are also a number of volunteer opportunties. Please check them out by going here:

http://www.orgsites.com/ca/invisibleyouth/_pgg9.php3

Invest in our future...

glitter-graphics.com

The Rights Of The Homeless
(Please Read!)
http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/disc.html?gpp=18770&pst=868182

Please?

2009-11-01T01:38:00.002-04:00

Please?

glitter-graphics.com

Please take the time to read what I've written about homeless and/or otherwise at-risk youth so as to get a better understanding of their reality...

http://www.epinions.com/content_5358657668

After you have done this, please at least go to take a look at a petition we're hoping to send to President Obama with at least 1000 signatures--and, hopefully, end up signing it. Although just your signature would be enough, leaving a comment re: your observations of why this is so important would put some extra oomph! into making this an effective petition.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/enact-youth-outreach-day

Finally, please pass this message on to at least five other people and ask them to do the same.

glitter-graphics.com

Lamps, Lamps, and MORE Lamps!!!

2009-10-22T12:25:00.002-04:00

Operation Lamp Post is doing very well! I've just added a third way to get another lamp post in the park--which I'm hoping to have filled with 25 lamp posts before long.

After 25 lamp posts have been added, I'm going to switch habitats to a holiday-themed one. Optimistically, I've already gone shopping for some really cool Halloween decorations and hope to have a Halloween-themed habitat up for Throw Rug and friends really soon!

I will include the 25 lamp posts in that habitat as a celebration!

Although no more lamp posts will be added to the habitat after that, I hope that the kinds of outreach actions earning these lamp posts will continue!

Here are the three ways that lamp posts can be earned:

For every $100 total of donations sent to our headquarters. This would be a total of donations, so it wouldn't all have to come from one person.
For every ten TLC packages sent to us. It doesn't matter what size. It can be a small package (like a large envelope filled with gift cards to national fast-food and/or store chains), or it could be anywhere from a small box to a huge crate of items listed on our wish list. When a total of ten arrive at our headquarters, another one of the 25 lamp posts I have waiting in the wings will be placed in the park.
Finally, the newest way for another one of the lamp posts to make its appearance: for every ten signatures to the petition that will be going to President Obama asking him to declare the second Saturday of every October to be Youth Outreach Day. You can read more about this--as well as finding a link leading to the petition by going here.

There are times when Russell does extra-special things for the street kids in his area (San Diego, CA) such as organizing a cook-out in Balboa Park or taking them to a restaurant (generally, about ten kids at a time, give or take, re: going to a restaurant).

Passers-by will see this going on, stop by to ask questions, and will also get into the spirit of things. They will offer to give Russell money to help with the mission, and Russell will ask them to give it directly to the kids, as they will know what they need the most.

There are more kids who stay in seclusion than come out in the open at this time, and those kids who are more out in public view will buy food, personal care items, etc. to take to the ones in hiding.

These kinds of donations don't even arrive at our headquarters, and their amount can only be estimated, and I'll place one or more lamp posts to recognize those gifts using the estimates given to me by Russell.

As of this writing (a little after noon, Anderson, Indiana time, on October 22, 2009), 14 of the 25 lamp posts have already been placed in the park, and they're just beautiful!

I can hardly wait to collect all 25 and place them in a more cheerful scene!!!

To take a look at pictures of how the park looked with no lamp posts and how the park looks at the time of this writing, please click on these two links...

No Lamp Posts

Lamp Posts In Park At A Little After Noon On 10/22/09.

Fall Festival Stuff!

2009-10-21T12:56:00.000-04:00

Below, find something I wrote over at Facebook (copied and pasted here) along with a funny childhood memory I wrote about when I was discussing fall festivals.

I think I'll start with the funny story first--and, after reading it, you will be so pulled in that getting you to go on reading the rest of what I've written will be...........pun definitely intended...............a cake walk!

P.S. Speaking of fall festivals and games, let me tell you about something funny that happened when I was in first grade and at a fall festival at my school (Fall Creek Heights Elementary--Go Yellow Jackets!!!)...

We had a fall festival each year in October, and all of the classrooms were turned into places to play carnival games.

The gym became the place to gather to eat, attend a raffle later, and--at least, that particular year--to have a cake walk.

We had a young custodian and bus driver (not my bus--I just knew him from his custodian activities) named John Ent, and I had the biggest crush on him. I mean, it must have been the mother of ALL crushes!

Of course, he was married with a new baby, but--at six years old--that didn't matter to me.

He was around 21 and looked like a cross between Johnny Cash and Elvis--to me, anyway.

Whenever he appeared on the scene, I could hardly focus on what I was doing.

Seeing him even distracted me from eating lunch--which is a miracle! LOL

His wife and baby usually joined him in the lunchroom, but I wasn't jealous or anything like that. I wasn't planning on stealing him away from her. It was just the same kind of crush that I had on Pat Boone, Dick Clark, Robert Stack, etc. Like the person takes my breath away!

Anyway, it was fall festival night, and we were having this cake walk.

For anybody not knowing what a cake walk is, this is when there are squares with numbers on them placed on the floor in a circle, and everybody walks around in a circle while music plays.

When the music stops, the announcer calls out a number, and, if you're standing on it, you get to go pick out a cake.

So, I was in the cake walk circle with my folks (and, if I remember right, my aunt and cousin), and we were walking around to the music.

That is, we were until I noticed John Ent in the circle with his wife, folks, sister, and other family members, and I stopped dead in my tracks and just stood there staring at him with a goofy look on my face.

People were urging me to keep the circle moving, but I was oblivious to them.

My folks finally had to take me out of the circle and put me on the bleachers so that the game could go on!

Fall festivals bring smiles to the faces of children--and Youth Outreach Day
is about bringing smiles to the faces of children, teens, and young
adults who could really use something to smile about!

We don't need another paid holiday--even if there might be some people
who want another one--so getting another paid holiday isn't what this
is all about.

I'm pretty certain that employers think that there are enough paid
holidays hanging around, even if one more (minimum) might thrill
employees to no end.

Therefore, any business owner who might be hesitant to put another
holiday on the calendar due to fearing one more day of paying employees
to stay home and relax can rest assured that this isn't what we're
after.

Invisible Youth Network has created a petition that will be sent to
President Obama after we get at least 1000 signatures on it--and the
more the merrier, so please share what I've written here with your own
network of friends.

Although I'm going to share two direct links to our website with
you--the home page and the page about the proposal for a holiday called
Youth Outreach Day--I want to tell you something about our vision for
YO-Day (That's, of course, a more casual way of saying Youth Outreach
Day that I came up with, as it might look cool on certain things such
as t-shirts--and it just sounds cool and fits into small spaces well).

First off the time:

We want the second Saturday of every October to be officially recognized as Youth Outreach Day.

Now for the definition:

Although we want our young people remembered and cared for 24/7 and
365, this is a special day set aside for a special recognition and
celebration of our young people--and, especially, those who are having
a rough way to go (everything from being taunted/bullied in school,
abused at home, not fitting in due to disabilities and/or poverty,
fill-in-the-blank-here-wit

h-more-options to those who actually have ended up trying to survive out on the streets).

Youth Outreach Day will be a great time to hold yard sales, do thons,
have bake sales/bazaars, wash cars, etc. to raise funds to help out
needy kids in your own communities and/or donate to places such as
Invisible Youth Network.

It's also a time of hands-on celebrating, if you live in an area such
as San Diego, Chicago, Toronto, etc. where there are homeless youth
hanging out. Get with friends to do a cook-out, games, etc. that will
be street-kid-friendly so that they can make some happy childhood/youth
memories and--when these get-togethers get noticed--even end up with
places to live!

It might be a good time to send out e-mails and/or snail-mails to
people in high places informing them of the need--as well as a time for
planning what to do the rest of the year to make certain that our young
people won't be forgotten and left to fall through the cracks of
society.

Without any further ado, here's the link to the homepage of our
website. Please go there at least--and, hopefully, end up exploring the
entire website to try to find a place where you might fit into this
special mission...

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net

The following is the link to the page where it talks about getting
Youth Outreach Day recognized as a regular holiday--as in even finding
it on calendars from such places as Hallmark and American
Greetings!--and, at the bottom of that page, there's a link that will
take you to the petition...

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net/EnactYouthOutreachDay.aspx

In the short time we've had our petition up, we have collected (as of
this writing) 29 signatures from not only citizens of the USA but,
also, various other parts of the world!

Remember that number (29) when you go to sign it, because that will
show you where we were on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at almost ten in
the morning Anderson, Indiana time (which is almost seven in the
morning San Diego, California time). If you go there and see a higher
number (even if it's only a number or so higher), you can celebrate
with us!

And, by signing it, you can make the number get higher as we press on
towards our goal of 1000 signatures minimum to present to President
Obama!!!

Now onto other IYN business when I share a letter written by our
Founder & Chairman, Russell T. Hartsaw. If you're currently a
student, teacher, staff member, etc. at a high school or college,
please noise what he's written around...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hello!

Are you familiar with our organization (Invisible Youth Network), which
was officially launched on March 26, 2007 for the purpose of reaching
out to homeless youth. If not, you might want to become familiar with
us by visiting our main website:

http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net

At this time, we are encourage teens and young adults to work together
with faculty/staff at their high school and college campuses in the
establishment of chapters of the Invisible Youth Network, which will
get your students involved in worthwhile civic activities.

There is no fee to pay for starting a chapter, and we will give you
whatever support you will need to both get started and maintain a
chapter, along with being available to answer any questions you might
have, now and later.

It's been our experience in the past that we can count on our youth to
bring a lot of insight and enthusiasm into our organization, so we're
anxious to hear back from you so that we can get started.

The Invisible Youth Network supports the leaders of tomorrow by partnering with them today!

Teens can bring refreshing insights into our organization. What we
forget is that some of the greatest minds in the world were teens when
they came up with their great ideas.

So, shouldn't youth as young people have a voice in issues that
directly concern them? They will not mysteriously learn how to fulfill
their civic duties the day they turn 18. They are a large presence in
our community and accordingly, they should have a voice in its
decision-making. And, shouldn't adults recognize that the tradition of
making decisions for youth without youth has failed and that their
ideas and solutions need to be taken seriously?

In addition Youth are 28% of the United States population, are active
participants in community activities, spend more than $150 billion a
year and are 100% of the future.

Russell T. Hartsaw
Founder & Chairman
Invisible Youth Network

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Invisible Youth Network is a grass roots project. It began with Russell
and me talking together about starting something like this.

Russell has actually experienced firsthand what it's like to be an
invisible youth after his parents mysteriously disappeared when he was
nine years old and he ended up a ward of the state of Florida.

He has had a long and, too often, painful journey to get to where he is
today and has an unquenchable passion for helping today's invisible
youth to avoid some of the mistakes he has made/things that he has gone
through along the way.

I grew up just the opposite--one of the privileged ones blessed with a
loving, stable family, several good friends, and the feeling of having
a place that I could truly call home. Even if what we do at IYN can't
completely bring about this kind of experience for our young people, we
want them to come as close as possible to being so blessed.

Since those early days back when 2007 was new (Russell and I met online
on January 15, 2007 when we were both writing for a discussion site
called Duno), and he and I talked into the wee hours of the morning
about our dreams, this organization of our dreams was officially named
and launched on March 26, 2007, and, even before then, we had joined up
with so many great people who shared our dream.

Several of you are right here on Facebook with us, and it would be hard
to tag all of you--but feel free to leave your comments here with this
note so that others can get to know you.

We also hope that, if you're reading about IYN for the first time, that you'll end up making it a household word of your own!

Perhaps, there will come a time when IYN is no longer needed, and that
will be a glorious day! Until then--when even one child is at-risk of
fading into invisibility--we would really like to be out there reaching
out to him/her.

Russell and I won't be around forever--and neither will you--so the
torch needs to keep on being passed from one generation to another
until no young person ever again gets left behind for any reason!!!

Blessings!
Ainsley Jo Phillips
Co-Founder
Invisible Youth Network

A few more matters before closing...

The picture used to illustrate this note isn't an original from me but,
instead, one I found on The Internet that I thought would fit the bill
quite well. I would like to share the link to the blog-entry where it
was posted. I don't know if the blogger is the original owner of the
picture, either. It's probably just a stock photo. However, that person
deserves to be credited for having used it before I have...

Home Decor Village News--Family Fall Fun

http://decorvillage.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/family-fall-fun/

Along those same lines, I've been promising a friend (whom I met at
another site, but she's here, too) to let others know about the various
things that she does, so I'm going to close this by introducing you to
Kimberly Lovell...

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=739715785

These are some fan clubs here at Facebook for some of her enterprises...

Whimsy Originals

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=739715785#/pages/Los-Angeles-CA/Whimsy-Originals-Online/91994818588?ref=sgm

Patches' Pet Pals

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=739715785#/pages/Los-Angeles-CA/Patches-Pet-Pals/91529371044

Crash Maps Accident Consulting

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=739715785#/pages/Los-Angeles-CA/Crash-Maps-Consulting/91192027686?ref=sgm

And I couldn't sign off after all of that fanfare without giving two
thumbs-up (because I was only born with two thumbs) to Bickel's Uptown
Cafe, which also has a fan club here. Do drop over there to drool--and,
if you're in the area--drop into the real McCoy to eat!!!

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=739715785#/pages/Anderson-IN/Bickels-Uptown-Cafe/97786413973?ref=ts

I think I've bent your Cyber-ears enough for now! Thanks for hanging with me!

And Now For Operation Lamp Post!!!

2009-10-11T10:20:00.000-04:00

Note: If complete photographs don't show up in this blog entry, you can use the links I've provided at the bottom of the page to go to the album where they were originally placed...

Old--But Good--Business...

The photo I'm showing here was how Throw Rug's habitat looked on Saturday, October 10, 2009 in celebration of a very new and special holiday called Youth Outreach Day.

I shared it in the Super Poke! Pets forum along with the following message...

The photo I'm showing here was how Throw Rug's habitat looked on Saturday, October 10, 2009 in celebration of a very new and special holiday called Youth Outreach Day.

Invisible Youth Network (http://invisibleyouthnetwork.net) came up with the idea of Youth Outreach Day for the purpose of getting more people to think about the needs of homeless and/or otherwise at-risk youth.

Of course, this is something we need to be doing everyday and not just for one day per year. But there still isn't anything wrong with having a day set aside where more people are thinking about the issues related to invisible youth and how to give them visibility so that they don't fall through the cracks of society.

Our goal is to have this as a widely-recognized official holiday by or before the second Saturday in October of 2010. We're not talking about a paid holiday off from the workplace, but just something right up there with St. Valentine's Day, Groundhog Day, etc.

YO-Day is still at a grass roots level, but a lot has taken place on this day even though it isn't official yet.

Some examples of events have been: the placement of collection boxes in stores for the purpose of collecting donations; a run-a-thon to raise money; delicious sack lunches being passed out to homeless kids; crafts being made and sold to raise funds; people writing to elected officials to draw their attention to this situation; and games and a cook-out being held in a park where several street kids camp out--which resulted in not only food and fun for them but, also, drew positive responses from onlookers who ended up taking several of them shopping, giving them their own spending cash, and even taking some of them into their homes!

Please join me in writing to President Obama and other more locally-elected officials (e.g. mayor, town council, governor) to request that the second Saturday of each October be officially proclaimed as Youth Outreach Day!

I hope that you'll also join me in writing to places such as Hallmark and American Greetings to get them to put out cards and other products with a Youth Outreach Day theme. Be sure to give them information about this holiday and that it falls on the second Saturday in October.

Finally, I hope that next October will find Youth-Outreach-Day-related items in the SPP store!

To get more of a feel for what kinds of things people can do to celebrate, go to a blog-entry I wrote in anticipation of our first one...

http://mhhj.blogspot.com/2009/09/youth-outreach-day-will-be-saturday.html

Thanks for reading this and, hopefully, responding!

Blessings!
Ainsley Jo Phillips :)
Throw Rug's Human
and
Co-Founder of Invisible Youth Network

And Now For The New Business--To Be More Specific: Operation Lamp Post!!!

Throw Rug and I are going to use this latest habitat to kick off Operation Lamp Post.

Homeless Kids 10/11/09

Whenever cash donations total up to another $100, a lamp post will be added to this habitat.

Whenever IYN Headquarters five more packages of wish list items (whether they're small packages like large envelopes full of gift cards or huges packages filled with all kinds of food, clothing, etc., they will count as one package apiece), a lamp post will also be added.

After 25 lamp posts have been added, Throw Rug and her friends will be placed in a much more cheery habitat for a holiday celebration!!! Will it be Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Christmas?

Hopefully, it will be by or before one of these three holidays when we reach this goal...

Youth Outreach Day Habitat

Homeless Kids/Operation Lamp Post Habitat

Youth Outreach Day Will Be Saturday, October 10, 2009 All Day!!!

2009-09-19T06:34:00.017-04:00

Attention Please!!!

Invisible Youth Network has declared Saturday, October 10, 2009 as Youth Outreach Day--and hopes to make this a regular event scheduled for the second Saturday in October in the years ahead. So, what does this mean to you, the reader? In short... How might you participate in this event that is designed to reach out to homeless and/or otherwise at-risk youth? There are many things one could do when it comes to participating in something like this, and you can do one of more of what I'm about to suggest--and/or even think of some of your own. A few suggestions to get you started (some of which can be started right on October 10, and others that will need some pre-October 10 preparation):

Prayer and/or positive thoughts is always a great starting point--but it's just a starting point, as we're expected to put wings on our prayers and to convert our positive thoughts into positive actions.
Once you have studied this information in order to know more about what this event is all about and its possibilities, write to your elected officials (everybody from the Mayor/Town Council right up to The President of The United States--or, if you're from another country, whomever the powers-that-be are there) asking that they might declare the second Saturday in October as Youth Outreach Day--not as a holiday where people get paid leave from work but just as one of those holidays that appear on calendars such as Groundhog Day, Sweetest Day, etc.
While you're contacting people, you might also include your local media and some of your favorite celebrities asking them if they would get involved in some way when it comes to celebrating this special day.
Become familiar with our mission by visiting our website and checking out our online directory in order to learn about at least some of the places online where IYN is represented. Perhaps, you might find some groups and/or activities of which you might want to be a part. You might also like to check out our volunteer page and see what is needed there that might be a match for you and/or somebody you know.
October 10 would be a great day for businesses to give a percentage of what they take in that day to Invisible Youth Network and/or any local agencies/churches/etc. who are doing something positive for homeless and/or otherwise at-risk babies, children, teens, and young adults. If you are a business owner, you might consider doing this. If you don't own a business, you can still discuss this with those who own/manage the restaurants, stores, and other establishments in order to encourage them to do this.
At the time of this writing (September 19), we have a growing number of chapters/affiliates of IYN, one of which is out of a high school. You can find some of them here and here. We would like to encourage more high schools to start chapters by contacting us to find out the requirements (which are, actually, quite simple). What would be wonderful would be for several high schools to start chapters and, then, have their first order of business (fundraising) to occur on Youth Outreach Day with some suggestions being (but not limited to): bake sale, car wash, walk-a-thon, talent show, showing classic movies (complete with popcorn) in the school auditorium for a small admission fee, having a carnival.
Get with your neighbors and have a yard sale with all money taken in going to IYN.
If you're a popular musician, have a concert where at least part of your profits will go to IYN.
Churches and other organizations could host a very meaningful dining experience in their fellowship halls. For a donation of five dollars, each diner gets a place at a table where each spot includes an envelope, which is to remain unopened until the servers come around to take orders. At this time, each envelope is opened, and a card with a number on it is taken out and placed into some kind of device to hold it up. Only the servers know what the numbers stand for (a number of numbers stand for the same thing) and will start serving the diners accordingly. Some people will get a single item such as a piece of fruit, box of raisins, or small package of oyster crackers along with an empty styrofoam cup for getting served water. Other people will get sandwich bags containing seven potato chips and their styrofoam cups. A handful of people will get lucky and be served a steak dinner with all of the trimmings along with a bottomless cup of their chosen soft beverage. The majority of people will get a styrofoam cup of water--and a cardboard with the same picture on both sides to be placed in what held their numbers: a nasty-looking dumpster with the words "Now serving dinner!" written above it. The five dollar donations would, of course, go to IYN. Each dinner guest would be given at least one of our pamphlets to take home.
You could get with some friends or go alone to shop for items listed on our wish list. You could either do this on October 10 and, then, mail what you've bought to IYN headquarters the following Monday or else you could be doing your shopping in the days leading up to October 10 on which you go to the post office early to mail off the TLC packages.
If you know where homeless youth spend time (if you live in, or near, a community that has them), get with a group of people and have a cookout with them as the guests of honor.

I hope that these suggestions will get you started on your celebration of Youth Outreach Day. Feel free to drop us an e-mail to share how you ended up spending Saturday, October 10, 2009!