All photos by the lovely and talented TraceyJ.

This past weekend, I hosted an outdoor feast and bonfire at the farm to raise funds and awareness for Opportunity International Canada, a fantastic non-profit organization that provides microcredit loans, savings accounts, insurance and training to poor entrepreneurs around the world. As someone with an academic background in international development, I’ve been aware of microcredit development projects for a long time and always been a big fan of the model they follow (very community-oriented, providing empowerment instead of charity). I actually work part time for Opportunity, managing some of their website and social networking projects, but it was fun to do something a little different by volunteering my time (and the farm!) to participate in their Dine for Dignity campaign.

A great crew of adults, children and pets came out to enjoy good company and locally-grown, organic food, while chipping in to help me raise my fundraising goal (we did it!). The sun was out, the farm animals loved the attention and a variety of mini-farm adventures took place, including pulling a guest’s car out of the ditch with the tractor, electric shocks from the pig fence, bunny cuddling, and enjoying a gift of home-brewed beer.

Huge thank you to everyone who came out to help make the event a success and a VERY BIG thank you to my friend Tracey who took some absolutely beautiful photos of the farm. She’s captured some very special images for us.

If you’re interested in learning more about Opportunity International Canada, I encourage you to check out their website. Although I’ve reached my own personal fundraising goal, the overall campaign is still very much in swing and my fundraising page would happily accept additional donations that continue to come in :)

To see more (informal) photos of the event, visit my album on flickr.