Giving Tuesday

Dear Friends, 

On this Giving Tuesday, charities come together to bring us all the opportunity to help give back to the community. Here at the Nick Virgilio Haiku Association and Writers House, we believe that creative writing, public poetry, and more specifically, writing haiku, are gateways to literacy, language arts expertise and mindfulness. 


We’re excited to announce that donations across all platforms are being matched up to $2000 this season by a generous anonymous donor. Help us reach this goal! 


 Also, we have a Giving Tuesday promotion: your gift can earn you a premium reward! We’ll thank you for donations of $25 and more with NVHA publications - Just write a note in your PayPal donation with your shipping address. Here’s the rundown:


  • $25 - a copy of Nick Virgilio Writers House Anthology Volume 1

  • $75 - a copy of of the new Nick Virgilio Writers House Anthology Volume 2 - Haiku in Action

  • $100 - Nick Virgilio Writers House Anthology 1 & 2 bundle

  • $150 - a limited edition hardcover copy of Nick Virgilio Writers House Anthology Volume 2 - Haiku in Action


Our services this year included live and virtual workshops we’ve organized for the public - locally and globally.. Help us revive successful workshops like Monday Night Mindfulness, a free program led by a licensed mindfulness instructor, which helped participants with their mental wellbeing. With your support, we’d like to bring back Monday Night Mindfulness this year. 


Another workshop series was led by leading haiku poets like MIchael Dylan Welch and renowned haiku teacher, Tom Painting. Our workshops are available to you online in our YouTube channel - and they’re a real joy! Participants have gone on to publish haiku, tanka, and haibun written during the workshops in national and global poetry journals. 


We hope to expand these and other workshop programs in 2022, and add more programs for our local Waterfront South community, but can do so only with your help.


We’re delighted that your donations for up to $2,000 will be matched by an anonymous donor. Many businesses also match their employee’s donations for Giving Tuesday. Make sure to ask your employer if they are matching donations for Giving Tuesday this year, and let them know that you’ve made a contribution to NVHA. Click the button below to offer your support, and thank you for being a friend in our wonderful haiku community! 


The Nick Virgilio Haiku Association is a 501c3. Learn more on our website at www.nickvirgiliohaiku.org  and follow us on our social media feeds on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the latest in programs and services. 


Finally - alert the students in your world to watch for the January invitation to enter the Haiku Society of America Nicholas A Virgilio Haiku and Senryu Contest for students in grades 7-12.

Giving Tuesday Coming Up!

Hello friends of the Nick Virgilio Writers House and Haiku Association! First, we want to extend our gratitude to you for supporting us this past year. Just like you, we've been super busy in the whirlwind year that is and was 2021. Whether it's been through participating in our fast-growing literary journal: Haiku in Action, (by reading, submitting, and/or contributing,) or by joining our Monday Night Mindfulness classes, or cooking accessible and nutritious food with us in Art Unboxed, or performing/listening to poetry with us in our open mic reading series - we're grateful to have you be in our budding community. 

NVHA has done a whole lot this year, but on a tight budget. We've received a few generous programming grants, most notably from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, but as far as operational costs go, we could do better. We're largely dependent on small donors - so please know that your donations of any size matter and consider contributing to our Giving Tuesday fundraising campaign, no matter how little or how much you can spare. We wish to expand our programming and operations to provide literacy, education, and other necessities in both Camden and around the world. 

We're excited to share two new major donor updates. The first being a previous donor offering a college scholarship/stipend fund for local high school students, (more details on that in our next letter). The second being an anonymous donor promising to match up to $2,000 for donations to NVHA for this Giving Tuesday, which is coming up next week on November, 30th and through the holiday season. 

We haven't even begun to talk about our two biggest NVHA news updates for this year. First of all, we're excited to announce that we have a new president elected to run NVHA. Many of you know Robin Palley, an indefatigable organizational leader, non-profit wizard, and all around good human being. Sadly, we say thanks to outgoing president George Vallianos, a dear friend of Nick Virgilio, who fearlessly led us through the construction of the Writers House and so many adversities. If it wasn't for Mr. Vallianos, we wouldn't be where we are today, although we're happy to say that George will be sticking around as a board member for NVHA. For our next newsletter, we will get into more detail with a behind the scenes look at our second biggest update for this year, which we're sure a lot of you are already well aware of... (we'll give you a one-word hint: Anthology.)