Special Edition

Letter from the Colombia-Purdue Executive Director

Esteemed colleagues, friends and associates:

At Purdue, we take for granted that everyone reading this newsletter is a member of the Colombia Purdue Initiative, a diverse group of individuals in both Colombia and the United 

States that have one common goal: strengthen collaborative efforts between Colombia and Purdue. It has been my great pleasure to see this happen quite naturally as Purdue learns more about Colombia. And, while there are probably just as many ideas and approaches to further this progress as there are members of the CPI, often a simple trip can result in important commitments. I have a recent example:

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The fourth annual Purdue Day of Giving will take place on April 26, 2017. It is an online-based fundraising event where Purdue students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents and friends come together to grant opportunities and transform lives.

Last year, the entire Purdue community came together on April 27, 2016, to raise an astounding $18.3 million from 12,872 gifts in just 24 hours! All 50 U.S states and 44 countries were represented in the final tally.

To support Purdue’s work with Colombia, 52 gifts resulted in a total of $109,229.

• $106,550 for the Colombia-Purdue Initiative
• $2,670 for the Colombia Student Association at Purdue (CSAP)

Our sincere thanks to those of you who participated in last year's event - you are making a world of difference. Let's keep up the momentum! Click here to donate on April 26th.

Donating to the Colombia-Purdue Initiative is easy. Just go to this link on Wednesday, choose 'other' in the designation box, and write 'Colombia-Purdue Initiative Endowment' as the fund name. You can do this anytime on April 26th. However, there are fun challenges every hour that make your donation go one step further and help us climb to the top on the donation and participation leaderboards.

Challenges:

The challenges have cash prizes that go to the winning unit so we hope you will help us win one or more of these.  Of note – when a challenge is expressed as MOST GIFTS – every gift is counted in the challenge regardless of the number of donors or amount of the gift.  So for instance, I can make five $10 gifts to reach my intended gift amount of $50 during that challenge hour.  If it is expressed as MOST DONORS then the number of donors matters regardless of the amounts or numbers of gifts.

A few challenges you might consider are:

- International Gifts: If you live outside the US or have a non-US address, watch for one that is specifically for International gifts – to qualify as a participant in this challenge you must use your non-US address. We hope you will choose to support the Colombia-Purdue Initiative Endowment Fund – an unrestricted fund that supports all we do to help Purdue and Colombia together make a difference in the lives of our Colombian amigos as well as our community of Boilermakers.

- If you are faculty or staff and want to also help your college, you can still support the Colombia-Purdue Initiative Endowment Fund, however, you could choose to make your donation during the Faculty/Staff challenge.

- If you also want to help the Colombian Student Organization (CSAP) you can watch for the Student Organization challenge.  Look for CSAP in the qualified student organization list to be found at the Day of Giving participant site.

In all cases, the minimum donation that will count toward your chosen challenge(s) = $10 – we hope that you will participate at this level or more.  AND of course – feel free to participate in more than one challenge!