Dirt City Missions has launched!

Dirt City Missions, Inc.
A Fla. Non-Profit
PO Box 307
Daytona Beach, FL 32115
Contact: mmcdole@dirtcityhub.com

Board of Directors:
Morgan McDole, President
Aly Bowen- Director
Dug Ketterman- Director
Lindsey McDole- Director

Missions Statement:

Dirt City Missions Inc. is a charitable organization. Our mission is building youth culture through art, skateboarding, and international service missions.

Our gloabal efforts offer skateboarding to orphanages and youth shelters as an alternative positive and social outdoor activity, in order that their resident youth might be detered from the street way of life. We will build skateboard ramps, supply the safety and skateboard, as well as proper instruction. By providing a positive social outlets for youth locally and globally, we hope to bring promise and opportunity into their lives.

Our first Mission is planned for Odessa, Ukraine. The team so far is Aly Bowen, Dug Ketterman, Erik Brubaker, and Morgan McDole. More detials on the trip are at dirtcityhub.org. For information on the cause in the Ukraine, visit www.thischildhere.org.

If you want to support The Dirt City Missions effort, click on the Donate button. You will be directed to our PayPal account.

Thanks so much!
~ Morgan McDole, Founder

Ukraine Visit Dec. 2006


More about Dirt City Missions and the trip to the Ukraine:

The best service comes from the heart, and the best way to achieve this is to find something you have a heart for. The working hands behind Dirt City are passionate skaters, and know the joy, confidence, and companionship the activity provides.

Morgan McDole is the founder of Dirt City. She opened its non-profit sect, Dirt City Missions, in April 2008. Native to Daytona Beach, she has always held optimism for the future of the community, and after moving away for six years to sunny San Diego, and then flying around the world, she figured out a lot….that she wanted to give back to the place that she felt gave her such a rich childhood. All of her efforts, she knew, needed to start in Daytona Beach.

Dirt City Missions evolved in order to open travel, service, and cultural opportunity to the youth of Daytona Beach. The goal is to be a positive hub of Daytona Beach, sending kids abroad to serve at youth shelters and orphanages, placing them, as to utilize and hone their unique talents. We have opened doors using our connections and love for skateboarding and life.

There are already a few who have gone ahead from this area, such as, Mike Hess, who started Papa’s House- an orphanage in Nepal, and Pastor Robert Gamble, who serves at the Way Home Shelter in Odessa, Ukraine. It’s hometown heroes like these, who encourage our efforts here locally, and we now hope our community will too.

DK Ramps provides the ramp building expertise. The Doo Good Conservatory, from San Diego, CA is donating complete skateboards for the mission. Now, we are raising all the money and sponsorship for travel expenses to make it happen (transportation, accommodations, shots, passports, building materials, skateboards, safety equipment, etc).

Dug Ketterman, Aly Bowen, Erik Brubaker, Morgan McDole and Lindsey McDole, are the first scheduled to go to Odessa, Ukraine in March 2009. Our first mission is to bring a team of skilled skaters from Daytona Beach, to build a skateboard ramp for the local kids, as well as set them up with the basic skills, safety equipment, and boards. The ramp goes in at The Way Home Shelter, where kids are brought in off the street, given medical aid, and an education if they choose to stay and keep themselves clean of drugs. With visits under our belt, and requests and permissions from as far as Nicaragua and the Ukraine, we know the doors have opened and now it is time to raise the money and make it happen. We estimate 2-3 weeks in each location; building, teaching, learning, providing volunteer service at The Way Home, and documenting all along the way to share our experiences and adventures with the world.

Why the Ukraine for the first trip?

Morgan visited Odessa, Ukraine, in Dec. 2006, to serve at The Way Home Shelter. There are 3-4,000 homeless children living in underground tunnels, on the streets of Odessa. The need for a positive social outdoor activity at The Way Home Shelter, was expressed when she was here. It is too enticing for kids to turn from the Shelter, and return to living on the streets, after feeling the “freedom” of this lifestyle. Unfortunately, this life comes with drugs, disease, and eventually death. Knowing the joy it skateboarding has given her, Morgan took the kids from the shelter skateboarding when she was there, and saw the exuberant amount of energy they had. Skateboarding may be the activity to match the adrenaline rush, in which the kids are addicted to on the streets. The founder of The Way Home Shelter said, “Kids dream of something like this.” This is what Morgan was hoping he would say. Now all she needed was a crew.

God supplied these missing pieces when she moved back to “The Dirt” in 2007. It is now time to follow through and make it happen. Robert Gamble is the US representative from Daytona’s First Presbyterian Church, over there right now, and has been more than encouraging as we get all the details together.

Shelters and schools have been set up in Nepal and Ukraine from Dirt City locals Bob Gamble and Mike Hess. Check their sites and stories out below.

www.thischildhere.org
www.nepalorphanshome.org