Hi! I’m Ashbey! My son and I are Native American and we are so proud to be Hopi! Native American education is very important to us, so I organized a Native American assembly for my son’s school during November’s Native American Heritage Month, including Native dancers, drummers, and a Native storyteller!

Along with sharing our culture and traditions, the assembly will fulfill a state law requirement that all Illinois public schools must now include a unit on Native American history in their curriculum; meaning it will help our teachers.

Why I’m fundraising: I began planning this assembly in August and I discussed it with my PTO president and the assemblies chair. Between August and October, I received no negative feedback about the timing or funding of this assembly in response to any of my communications. After our school’s amazing principal approved the assembly and put it on the school calendar for November, the PTO’s initial response was unfortunately it would not pay for the assembly. When I asked for a board vote, I was presented with the recommendation to cancel the confirmed November assembly, fire the participants and reschedule the assembly for the spring. I was not comfortable taking away this source of income from people in my community and was advised that I would need to independently fund the assembly myself. I was also advised that if I independently funded the November assembly the PTO would cancel the Native American assembly it ultimately approved for the spring.

I would have been completely open to moving the assembly to the spring but this option was not presented until one week after the assembly was confirmed, placed on the school calendar and all of the participants were hired.

So! Here I am ready to fundraise to make sure our kids get to have this amazing experience and our teachers get to fill a unit of Native American studies! The total cost of this assembly is $1500. My family and I had originally committed to paying for $300 after the total cost ended up being more than the $1200 I estimated in my meeting with our principal.

Every dollar raised will go towards paying for the assembly and any extra money will go to our local Native American community center that provides meals and opportunities for our Native community.