Sharing the Light

As we once again celebrate Winterfest Online together, we continue our fandom convention tradition of selecting a charity, and holding auctions and collecting donations to benefit it. Each year’s WFOL selections and donation totals are listed below, showing how this fandom has come together over the years to have fun and do good at the same time! By carrying on this tradition, we honor the series’ ethos to carry the light, each in our own way, and try to make the world a little better for others. This year, the WFOL charity is

Trickle Up

Trickle Up helps the poorest graduate out of extreme poverty. Women with disabilities, rural populations, indigenous groups, and refugees are their focus, primarily because they are most likely to be beyond the reach of government and other anti-poverty non-government organization programs. Carefully selected women form savings groups with other women, receive short-term food and medical expenses then small seed capital grants to start businesses, receive coaching and build skills, and use their social support system to help each other build upon their successes.

In 2018, 160,000 people participated in Trickle Up’s programs across South and Central America (such as in Guatemala and Mexico), in Africa (programs exist in, for example, Burkina Faso, Chad, Uganda and Niger), and in Asia (such as in Bangladesh and India).

Trickle Up partners with community-based organizations, corporations, and national government social protection programs, among others, by adapting their strategies for particular populations and integrating them into existing programs to enhance their effectiveness, with better serving the extremely poor as their major objective. Trickle Up has been a pioneer in providing this type of service since its inception in 1979. Since that time, Trickle Up estimates they’ve helped over 1.5 million people (participants and their children) move out of extreme poverty, and their goal is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.

To learn more about Trickle Up, go to their website: https://trickleup.org/

Contributions will be accepted throughout Winterfest Online. It’s easy to contribute! You can, of course, send funds directly to Trickle Up. If that’s how you feel most comfortable contributing, we urge you to do so. But we’d really like to send one cashier’s check in the name of the Beauty and the Beast fans who contributed during Winterfest, along with a letter explaining our efforts. If that appeals to you, please contribute by submitting funds through Paypal or writing a check.

Here’s how to do it – it’s easy!

Just click on the Donate button below. JoAnn Baca is collecting our contributions, so hers is the e-mail address you’ll see. Enter the amount you wish to contribute and click the Donate with Paypal button, then follow the directions on the screen. You can pay with a debit or credit card, a bank account, or Paypal balance. You can use Paypal from outside the U.S. to send a contribution in a variety of currencies, which will be converted into U.S. dollars.

If you would prefer to send a check, you can send it to JoAnn at:

JoAnn Baca 5560 Redland Drive San Diego, CA 92115

You may make a check out to Trickle Up and JoAnn will include it along with the consolidated Paypal contributions.

A reminder: we have some wonderful items up for auction on Ebay! Please check them out. The seller is “santiago23” and every penny raised in the auctions will be added to the cashier’s check that will go to Trickle Up. So bid on some terrific B&B swag, knowing that your funds will go to our selected charity!

That’s the essence of our fandom’s tradition of doing good while having fun: a worthy charity, easy ways to contribute, and a chance to feel good about doing good as we all join in to raise funds for our WFOL charity! Let’s make a difference in the lives of others, one even more profound than the difference “Beauty and the Beast” has made in our lives. It’s the Tunnelish thing to do!

Items on auction on ebay- $931.65