A Message from Rudy Krueger
Event Organizer - Great American Yard Sale

Hi, I'm Rudy Krueger representing the Great American Yard Sale which will be held at 195 Fox Valley Center, on the North-East corner of Rt. 59 and New York Street in Aurora.

Please give me the next few minutes to highlight what we are trying to accomplish with the 22nd Annual Great American Yard Sale.

Our first goal is to raise $150,000 for the benefit of 5 local organizations that work directly with homeless families in DuPage County and the Naperville/Aurora area. These groups are the Department of Human Services, Senior Home Sharing, HESED House, DuPage PADS, Families Helping Families, and Loaves & Fishes Food Pantry.

Our second goal is to achieve more public awareness of the social and economic destructiveness and how rapidly this serious problem is escalating in these good economic times and how it effects all of us directly or indirectly.

Homeless people are not always the alcoholics or drug abusers as vividly depicted by the news media. The great majority of homeless people are children (over 500,000 nationwide). The average age of these children is six years old! Homelessness usually is a result of a major crisis that occurs in a family such as; joblessness, bankruptcies for a farm family, a debilitating illness (medical bills), the death of a spouse and many other factors-including a lack of education. The list goes on and on!

Tonight all across America, "The Bread Basket of the World", there will be little children and their families sleeping in cars, doorways, garages or church basements—terrified little children and their families constantly on the move and mentally being devastated by their experiences on the street! These children have no chance of having a "normal" childhood that should include school, friends, laughter, parties, playing in the park or a yard, or even having a nightly snack and a warm bath. We must all work together to eliminate this terrible tragedy!

The purpose of local organization like Families Helping Families is to help these families with food, clothing, shelter, medical and dental programs. Also, available is job training and counseling for parents to help keep the family together and get back into the main stream of community life and regain the quality of living we all take for granted in the bountiful country we enjoy today!

In order to accomplish this undertaking, we depend upon the general public for their donations of merchandise, and a very large number of volunteers that sort through the donations prior to the sale dates. These volunteers also help us clean up the area after the sale. We depend on the generosity of the Westfield Fox Valley Center in Aurora to share their parking lot for 3 weeks out of the year in order to accommodate the tents used for the sale. For us to have a safe parking area for the shoppers attending the sale, we also call upon the Aurora Police Department to help with traffic control.

In closing, this is a win-win situation for everyone that is involved. The homeless families receive the help they so desperately need. The volunteers feel good about the help they gave. The sponsors benefit from the large amount publicity. The "shoppers" get great buys on every type of merchandise imaginable and in many cases, these "shoppers" are people that could not afford to buy clothes, books, toys or shoes for their families, and the people that donate all the merchandise even get a tax break! Over the past eighteen years we have raised close to a million dollars for charities.

Please keep in mind that at sometime in all our lives, someone has helped us and it is now our turn to help a family in need!


Sincerely,

Rudy Krueger
http://www.kruegerrealtors.com/
rkrueger@kruegerrealtors.com