On April 20th VFA will have our annual dinner. The dinner is in celebration of 35 years of service to the community. It also almost coincides with the birth of my son, who is due to arrive tomorrow. After much discussion, my wife and I are going to auction off the naming rights to the baby at the dinner, with all proceeds going to VFA. You can name this baby if you are the highest bidder, and it will be his formal first name for 18 years (He can change it once he is of age if he doesn’t like the name). This is a wonderful way to support VFA’s many programs that help immigrant and refugee children and family. You can name the baby after yourself, or perhaps in honor of someone else.
Of course, there are certain restrictions:
- It can’t be a profanity in any language
- It should not be unreasonably long
- It must have at least one vowel
- It should be somewhat gender-appropriate
- It should not offend anyone from any culture
- There is no expectation that you have visitation or other rights to the baby once you name him (though, of course, we’d love for him to meet his namer from time to time)
As this is a serious and potentially life-affecting decision, there is a minimum starting bid of $5,000, which will provide a six-weeks summer learning and enrichment program for 10 students. If we do not raise at least that amount from auctioning off the baby’s name rights, we will not move forward. Please spread this message to your friends who may be interested in supporting a great organization while having their or a loved one’s name immortalized in our son. It’ll be a great story for us to tell him when he’s old enough to ask how he got his name. He’ll feel proud that he helped to advance VFA’s mission of strengthening the community.
I hope to see you at the dinner. If you cannot make it, please email me (at vu.le at vfaseattle.org) if you are still interested in bidding. We can take bids even if you cannot make it to the dinner.