Posted by Gabe on April 19, 2010 under Kids are Heroes | 
I am so excited to announce our new partnership with Charity Choice, a non-profit organization that provides gift cards for charity. Now I see that puzzled look on your face: What exactly does that mean? So I took the words right from the Charity Choice web site to explain:
You make the donation:
Our charity gifts are actually charity donations that you are making when you purchase a physical card or eCard for special occasions. You decide on the amount you wish to donate. This donation is 100% tax deductible for the purchaser, at the time of the purchase. You will receive an emailed tax acknowledgement for your records.
Your gift entitles the recipient to select the charity:
The card-holder (recipient) may designate the funds to the charity they choose from our online list.
Out of this partnership emerged a special Kids Are Heroes Gift Card. If you purchase one, 50% of what you purchase will go directly to Kids Are Heroes. The other 50% will be assigned by the recipient to go to any of several charities supported by the participating heroes on our site. This gift goes a long way and is such a meaningful gift. That pair of plaid socks you bought your dad or boyfriend will be long forgotten before this kind of gift card will be. So please tell your friends about this and give the gift of charity.
Posted by Gabe on April 15, 2010 under Kids are Heroes |
Usually we speak of “giving back” or giving up something and wishing for nothing in return. Sometimes though it is really nice to get something in return for what we do. We are certainly not interested in cash or anything of monetary value, because this kind of thing pales in comparison to other things we get back anyway. I would like to share an email with you from a lieutenant in the Philadelphia Police Department.
Before I do that, let me clue the readers in who haven’t heard about our recent event at Boyd’s Bear Country in Gettysburg, PA. On Saturday, April 10, we hosted a Bear Drive where children made bears to donate to deserving children. They stuffed them with different colored beads, each color representing a certain emotion or trait such as laughter and bravery. They carefully selected their bear and dressed them in their favorite clothes. They named the bears and even drew pictures and wrote letters to the children who would receive them. The bears were destined for one of four places: Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Baltimore, Children’s Medical Center in Washington DC, Bears On Patrol and the Nyaka School for Orphans in Uganda. They were all shipped out this past Monday.
Bears on Patrol is an organization we recently partnered with that supplies bears to police departments. The idea is that police officers donate the bears to kids who find themselves in difficult situations. We ended up donating a total of 140 bears on Saturday, and 32 of them went to the Philadelphia Police Department on behalf of Bears on Patrol. Now back to the email. Lieutenant Patrick Quinn of the Philadelphia Police sent us this message today:
Mr. O’Neill,
My name is Patrick Quinn I am a Lieutenant with the Philadelphia Police Department. Recently we received 32 bears donated by your daughter and her friends through bearsonpatrol.org (Blake Raab). As I write this e-mail one bear is going to a child who recently had his father killed by violence in Philadelphia and yesterday 04-14-2010 ( the day we got them) two other bears were given to a couple girls in a similar situation.
Please express my sincere gratitude to your daughter for her compassionate gesture and efforts. The bears that have been donated to The Philadelphia Police Department will be given to children who are either victims of crimes or children of crime victims. Currently our homicide unit and special victims unit’s will be passing these bears onto children who have had an extremely traumatic experience in their lives and i’m sure they will love and cherish the gift your daughter has provided through her efforts.
Thank you MaryMargaret O’Neill.
I will periodically update you and thanks again.
Patrick Quinn
Lieutenant
Philadelphia Police Department
This is the kind of “return gift” that is priceless to us.
Posted by Gabe on April 5, 2010 under Kids are Heroes |
One of the really neat things about social media is the collaboration I have seen among seemingly divergent groups. One would think that there is not much overlap between what Kids Are Heroes is all about and what Chasing4Life does. But if people respect and admire what each other are doing, a connection can be made.
Case in point: Chasing4Life is now planning a Kids Are Heroes Tour. Normally they are all about disaster preparedness and educating kids about severe weather and similar topics. Now they are not changing their platform totally, but for this tour they are tweaking it so that the overall theme of the tour will be what EACH PERSON can do to change their world and make a difference. This theme is interwoven through presentations on severe weather safety, severe weather science, earthquakes, hurricanes, community response disasters and many more subjects.
Regular readers should remember Alannah Raven, a KAH hero who saves wild horses who I recently interviewed. She is an integral part of this Chasing4Life tour. Alannah will be speaking about her experiences in disaster recovery, community projects, severe weather safety education and how kids can make a difference in their own homes, their community and their country. She and her dad speak to public and private schools, chamber of commerces, public libraries and churches. And the audiences are not just kids. They regularly speak to kids, adults and seniors as they have a message for everyone. The good news is that not only are they also going to speak about Kids Are Heroes, but they will also donate a portion of the proceeds directly to our organization.
This tour is being set for a run from Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, New York, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and South Carolina. So if you live in this general area and want to book them in your city, email tour@chasing4life.org with KIDSAREHEROES in the subject line. They are currently setting June 1st as a deadline to get all dates booked. The dates themselves will be in the early start of the school year 2010.
