It’s taken a ton of planning and much more logistics than I counted on, but our first shipment of “swag for charity” is headed to AOET in Uganda, Africa to help AIDS orphans under their care. This is quite a cool story, and many players were involved in making this happen.

Before I get into details, let me first say that this shipment would not have been possible without the help of Matt Wagenknecht, who provided us with deeply discounted shipping through FedEX. Without his help, this package would not have been sent and we would have been without a shipping mechanism meaning NO packages would be sent! Thanks Matt! Also, Dalien Talbot (http://daltonic.blogspot.com) and his supporters from SecondLife make a $L22,000 (Linden Dollar) donation, which will be used to offset the shipping charges. Thanks, guys!

	First, there’s the USB drives from CelleBrite. These kind folks were kind enough to donate nearly 50 (!) of these drives (all 64MB) to our cause in order to replace the floppy drives being used in the offices, the clinic and (later) the school lab. These will be so much nicer and infinitely more durable than the floppies that are in use now.
	Next, there’s 500 (of the 1,000) pencils donated by Jim Kelly. Each of these round wooden pencils sports the URL www.AOET.org. What a great, practical donation for the kids!
	Then we have two older Kodak digital cameras which were donated by Jethro Taylor as part of a large donation that included several laptops (covered in this post). These are perfect cameras for Uganda because they take great pictures, they use standard AA batteries, they are very durable, and they don’t look too expensive (which makes them less of a target for theft). The only problem was that I didn’t have cards or cables for them. So instead of buying cards and cables, I put out an APB to the volunteer list, and several people (Brian Smith-Sweeney, Tom Stripling and Eugene Kogan) stepped up and donated Compact Flash Cards and/or USB Multicard readers to go along with the cameras. What a great team effort!
	Brian Bourne over at Sector.ca donated twenty of these awesome cooler bags to our cause, and two of them made it into this shipment. These are really high-quality bags, and although they’re perfect for a six-pack of bottles, they’ll serve all sorts of more practical purposes in Uganda. They can be used for food, medicine, all sorts of things. What a cool donation!

Along with all this, we also sent 50 pens (38 standard and 12 premium), five zippered totes, three SD card readers, two aluminum flashlights (and no partridges in a pear tree) all donated through the Swag For Charity campaign.

I’m so excited about this shipment not only because it’s our first, but because it was a real team effort that paves the way for doing more good. This is a small, tangible example of what our community can do when we give of our time and effort. Together, we are helping children a world away lead better more empowered lives! Thanks to everyone for your continued support!