Organizing a Fund Raising Seminar

A personal reflection on a fundraising seminar, and what it means to show up for a place you’re from.

1 What happened

On June 24, 2026, two earthquakes — both magnitude 7 or greater — struck northwestern and central Venezuela. They were large strike-slip events, and between them they have killed more than 4,400 people and injured over 16,700. Recovery is still underway as I write this, and I suspect, unfortunately, that the toll hasn’t finished climbing.

I heard about it the way I imagine a lot of people in this aikido community did: a message forwarded from someone with family there, then another, then the numbers themselves. There wasn’t much of a decision to make once the scale of it set in. When something happens to a place you’re from, or a place your training partners are from, you do what you can with what you have. What we had was a mat, and a network of dojos willing to open it up.

2 What came together

The idea of a fundraising seminar went out to a few dojos almost as an afterthought — less a proposal than an assumption that of course we’d do this. Florida Aikikai, Aikido Miramar, Kenosha Aikikai, and our own dojo all said yes almost as soon as it was asked. That speed wasn’t really about any one person pushing for it. The sense of duty was already there, spread across a lot of people, waiting for a reason to act on it.

We decided to funnel whatever we raised through Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), an organization with a track record of getting aid to disaster zones quickly. Florida Aikikai offered their space and handled most of the on-the-ground logistics, and Peter and Penny Bernath made sure instructors and students arriving from out of town had what they needed. That kind of generosity — opening a space, sorting out the details — doesn’t always get mentioned, but it’s usually what makes an effort like this possible in the first place.

3 What the mat looked like that Saturday

The mat was full. People trained, and in training, gave their time toward something larger than the technique itself. I demoed nikkyo that day — a small detail, but it’s the part I still remember in my body, more than any of the numbers that came after. Some people couldn’t make the trip and gave online instead, in the days around the event.

Between the two, the community raised close to $10,000 — most of it, as it happens, in the final few days, once word reached more people. Seventy-two separate donations went into that total, most of them modest, somewhere between $100 and $150. That’s worth noting on its own: this wasn’t one or two large gifts carrying the total, but a lot of people independently deciding it was worth doing something.

I’m grateful to everyone who trained, gave, or helped in some smaller way I may not even know about. I’d also like to thank our photographer, @wmeleanfoto on Instagram, for documenting the day.

4 What I keep thinking about

Recovery in Venezuela is still going, and it’ll keep going long after this post is off the front page. What we did was small next to that — one Saturday, a few hundred people, some money moved through an organization that knows how to get it where it needs to go. It’s not going to rebuild anything o n its own. But it wasn’t nothing either, and I’m glad I got to be part of it.

#Venezuela #Aikido #FloridaAikikai #CapitalAikikaiofWisconsin #AikidoMiramar #KenoshaAikikai