Will Bontrager (http://www.willmaster.com) is someone whom I respect a great deal, for a number of reasons.

So when Will mentioned to me the plight of the Pine Ridge Reservation Lakota people (for those not familiar with this South Dakota reservation, the reservation boundaries and history include Wounded Knee), and urged me to visit the site which has been put together and is being maintained by volunteers in an effort to lend a hand, I of course did just that.

Now, I’ve been on the streets, been penniless, been a single mom, and had to rely on the kindness of strangers, but I have also been very fortunate, and never have I had to experience such bleak and abject, close-to-the bone poverty. And for that I am eternally grateful.

These are real people, real families, real children, real teenagers, for whom a few dollars can make all the difference in the world. As the website will tell you:

“Families live in overcrowded, substandard conditions–no insulation, no central heat. Some sleep on dirt floors. Fifty-nine percent of the homes are substandard. Many don’t have running water and occupants must carry water from the local rivers daily for their needs. Many don’t have sinks with piped-in water, stoves, refrigerators, or heating and plumbing.”

Where do your gifts go?

Well, that’s once of the nice things – one of the main organizers, Pat Perkins, keeps a running list of urgent needs – so that you can donate (they make it easy – donate through PayPal) directly for, say, the single mom who needs heating propane in this blistering cold region, or to the expectant mom who needs baby clothes, or to the senior meal center which needs a working stove so that the seniors can have a warm meal, for goodness sake. The urgent needs page is here:

http://www.pineridgerez.net/urgent.php

The main site is here:

http://www.pineridgerez.net

Go ahead. Make a difference.