We're so excited for our February NetSquared! We'll be meeting and learning about a new organization in Houston called The Community Cloth, a group dedicated to helping refugee women support their families as they start a new life in the United States.

About The Community Cloth
The Community Cloth is a microenterprise initiative empowering refugee women in Houston.

It targets economic, educational and social goals through the provision of seed grants, training, and peer support, and by expanding market opportunities for refugee women artisans.

As a collaborative of several refugee-led and refugee-serving organizations, and their supporters, The Community Cloth supports women who want to create and sell handmade, indigenous arts and crafts such as woven bags,knitted scarves, embroidered linens, baskets, rugs and more. Through producing and selling their wares, the women have an opportunity to express their culture and heritage,learn new skills that will assist them in transitioning to life in the US, and obtain much neededsupplemental income. All profits from sales go directly to the artisans.

The Community Cloth is about a new start. Purchases of Cloth products help refugee women provide for the basic needs of their families as they work to establish new lives in Houston.

The delightful Stephanie Weaver of the Texas Bowl will be joining us to give an overview of the Texas Bowl game, how they got where they are and where they are going from here! We'll also learn a bit about the official charity of the Texas Bowl: DePelchin Children’s Center

Come with your GAME FACE ON!!! This will be a fun presentation with a fantastic group of folks.

About the Texas Bowl
The NCAA awarded a new bowl game to Houston on June 27, 2006. The inaugural Texas Bowl was played in Reliant Stadium, home of the Houston Texans, on December 28, 2006, at 7:00 p.m. The Texas Bowl featured Kansas State from the Big 12 and Rutgers from the Big East. Rutgers finished their Cinderella season by winning their first bowl game in school history 37-10.

In 2007, the Bowl featured a clash of old Southwest Conference foes, TCU Horned Frogs (from the Mountain West) and the University of Houston (from Conference USA). TCU won 20–13 in front of over 62,000 fans.
In the 2008 Texas Bowl, the Rice Owls defeated the Western Michigan Broncos 38–14. The game featured two high-scoring offenses, but the Owls, led by quarterback Chase Clement, jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. This was Rice’s first bowl victory since playing Alabama in the 1954 Cotton Bowl.
Over the last three years, the bowl game has donated over $200,000 to DePelchin Children’s Center, the bowl’s official charity beneficiary.

Our success over the last three years has been due entirely to the community support we have received and our amazing volunteers (like Michael ). Because of this, we have taken a big step up in the bowl world and beginning in 2010 will feature a matchup between the Big 12 and Big Ten.

We are incredibly fortunate to have Michael Coppens of Houston's Society for Performing Arts (www.spahouston.org) come to speak with us on learning the ins and outs of the Houston arts community.

Learn about the enormous variety of Houston arts organizations, how they impact the cultural scene here in Houston and ways that you can connect and help these amazing groups.

More details soon - this will be one Net2 night NOT to be missed!!

Join us as we host Patty Fadhouli of Asians Against Domestic Abuse

About AADA

Asians Against Domestic Abuse is a group that was initially started by a handful of women from Southeast Asia with the goal of providing assistance to women from that part of the world in their own native language. they help them get out of abusive situations, and provide them with living accommodations, food, emotional support, legal, etc. They have expanded to support women from all over Asia and the Middle East.

http://www.aadainc.org/

Join us as we host Susan Rafte of the remarkable organization Pink Ribbons and discusses how they are 'in motion against breast cancer'!

We're also kicking off a new Houston Net2 Meetup format, stay tuned for more details!

More info on Pink Ribbons: www.pinkribbons.org

Pink Ribbons Project was founded by a group of dancers who were individually touched by breast cancer. Through that experience and perspective we have to believe that dance and the other arts:

* can educate and inform the mind in ways that traditional methods cannot
* can move people to action
* can inspire and lift the spirits of those with breast cancer
* can help heal the bodies of those fighting breast cancer

In 1995, Jane Weiner, a professional dancer in New York City, learned that her sister in Houston, Susan Rafte, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Jane joined with friends and fellow dancers David Parker, Sara Hook and Robin Staff, to found Pink Ribbons Project, dancers in motion against breast cancer. Together they produced a fund-raiser in New York City to raise enough money to send breast cancer survivors to testify in Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C.

That testimony helped convince the FDA to approve three new cancer-fighting drugs. One of those drugs, Taxotere, was a drug that Susan would take the next year, allowing her to improve enough to receive a stem-cell transplant in 1997.