Goal: $5,000!

There is no guarantee that a group of Famous Dave's workers can make a difference in the lives of people in Arbegonea, Ethiopia; but to give it a chance we have to raise $5,000. This amount will provide the funds necessary to make a fact-finding trip to the region and find things such as needs, a contact person and potential ways to develop a relationship between the people of Arbegonea and those of us here in America. Why $5,000? Here is a breakdown of what that pays for: Airfare for 2 ($3,800), Hotels ($600), Car ($200), Translator ($40), Food ($100), Shots ($200). There is no waste here, just enough to cover the cost of taking the next step to see if this can really happen.

In The Beginning...

Darn that Jeff Donohue! As is pretty common most nights at Famous Dave's in Oswego, Jim Melton likes to jump on a bandwagon and drill it into the ground talking to other workers about it all night. So when Jeff Donohue brought up the idea of running the marathon, and Leslie Schaefer came into work saying she was going to run, IT WAS ON! We had almost the whole staff that night committed to running the marathon, and not only running, but running to do something we called "helping people". Jim Melton said that if anybody signed up he would run, thinking that nobody would actually do it. And then something crazy happened, Jeff actually registered! Then Leslie brought in a registration form. Shelly Marek started the training program. Never would Jim have thought that a night of mindless chatter at Famous Dave's would lead to actually running 26.2 miles, but now we have a running team. And not only that, but the charity everyone decided to run for was not any established charity, but our own newly created charity, called Amarce. For the last year, Jim has been trying to establish some sort of relationship with the former hometown of his two adopted daughters, Alexa and Liana. He quickly found out that if something was going to happen, he would have to do it. So he had been wanting to start a charity to try and find ways to help there. And what you read on this blog is the birth of that charity that Jeff, Shelly and Leslie began!

We're doing this! BOOM!