To celebrate Arizona Gives Day, a beautiful local partnership between Firefly Gathering Festival and The Flagstaff Music Festival charity has chosen to donate a portion of their Festival proceeds to Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. AZ Gives Day is a grassroots statewide day of giving, a one day online campaign for Arizona’s nonprofits to raise as much donors and money as possible in a 24-hour period.
Firefly Gatherings is a local Festival designed to inspire profound positive social and individual growth by providing the opportunity to connect deeply, learn unique skills, become inspired, and celebrate life. Flagstaff Music Festival is made up of community members Bob Miller, Mike Taylor, Rand Jenkins, Andrea Wittekind, and Laura Rivero whose mission is to develop, organize and promote performance arts such as music, dance and theater for the purpose of bringing the performance arts to the State of Arizona and to donate revenue as created by these events to charitable organizations. Willow Bend Environmental Education Center provides education outreach services that build environmental awareness and an ethic of responsible stewardship of our natural and cultural resources. With ever decreasing funds for education the organization is relying on community members and partners to help support its critical work.
FMF Founder Mike Taylor thinks that this donation is important for all three organizations because, “We are proud to support Willow Bend’s mission. They are a great local organization providing education, outreach, art and a place for better connecting with our environment.” Andrea Wittekind, one of the founding members of Firefly Gathering sees an inspiring alignment between Firefly and Willow Bend, saying “it takes communities supporting each other’s endeavors in order for us all to thrive and continue with our goals. Firefly has strived to model and teach strong environmental ethics within itself, the local community and its reaches. Paying it forward is crucial to supporting ongoing education and building awareness. Firefly is thrilled to be supporting Willow Bend, and looks forward to future opportunities for collaboration and promoting its excellence. ”
Willow Bend’s Executive Director, Moran Henn is very excited to receive these much needed funds and is thrilled for the kinds of projects they will go to support, for instance, upcoming Saturday Science events, free community events held every first Saturday of the month. “with this generous gift we will be able to engage even more community members, and provide opportunities for new families to experience hands on environmental programing and activities” said Henn.
