Each year we make a donation to a charity to say thanks and help out worthy organizations. For many years it was Yonge Street Mission, then BroadReach Foundation and now we’ve donated to Hands Across The Nation (HATN) for the past couple years.

We chose HATN as they are managed entirety by a small team of devoted volunteers. Their commitment ensures the lion’s share of donations goes directly to projects while having very low operating costs (than 10% of total expenditures).

This year we are trying to make a bigger difference by matching any donations that are made by our partners and friends up to a maximum of $5,000 total.  On top of that, HATN has a donor that will then match those donations.  This means a $250 donation is matched twice over, so $1,000 goes to the charity.  That’s pretty cool.

If you know someone that might be interested in donating, the site is https://www.hatn.org/donate/ (Don’t forget to drop us a note after the donation, so we know how much to match.)

Joanne travelled to The Gambia in January/February with HATN to help build a market garden, distribute health care and oversee a well being drilled for drinking water and irrigation.

I’ll hopefully be joining the next trip, to Mali, once COVID is over.