12,000 Ottawa students smother record in hugs

Thousands of students from 10 Ottawa high schools think they may have squeezed into the Guinness Book of World Records with the world’s biggest bear hug.

Organizer Peter Lamothe, who works at St. Matthew Catholic High School, estimated that 12,000 students, teachers and parent volunteers took part in a gargantuan group embrace Friday as part of an effort to raise more than $150,000 for the Ottawa Hospital Foundation, the CHEO Foundation and the Ottawa Senators Foundation.

Byron Shaw, a student at St. Matthew who raised $1,500 said students won’t know until later whether they actually broke the record, but are hoping they succeeded and had fun in the meantime.

“We felt like connected with everyone else and I was in between two Canadian Mounties — it was pretty cool,” said Shaw, who joined thousands of others to encircle the Rideau Canal from the Pretoria Bridge to the Laurier Bridge.

Prince Harry: Diana Would be Proud of Charity

BUTHA-BUTHE, Lesotho – Prince Harry says his mother would be proud of the work he and his regiment are doing to revamp a school for disabled children in the impoverished African kingdom of Lesotho.

Prince Harry was speaking Tuesday at the Thuso Center in a village outside the Lesotho capital, Maseru.

Prince Harry says he pushed wheelbarrows, filled trenches and worked up a sweat, saying: ”It would be wrong for a patron of a charity to not get involved.”

He is in the country with his regiment, the Household Cavalry, assisting with projects run by Sentebale, the charity the prince set up in his mother’s memory with Prince Sessio of Lesotho.

By Associated Press

Bill Gates relaunches philanthropy

Through his foundation, Microsoft founder is aiming to change charity – There’s a story about Bill Gates that his wife, Melinda, likes to tell. Shortly before the couple established their philanthropic foundation in 1997, Bill carried around in his briefcase for a month an emotional letter from an American family asking him to help a sick child who needed a kidney. “Bill agonized over it,” Melinda recalled at a digital industry conference last month in California. “Do you spend $20,000 on a single transplant or buy vaccines for many children in Africa?”

For the past 10 years, the Gateses have opted for the latter: “How can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have?” Bill asked a sea of Harvard University graduates at their commencement ceremony last year.

The answer? If you’re Bill Gates — with $37.5 billion in your foundation’s coffers and as much as $100 billion to contribute over the course of your lifetime — you do it very, very carefully, say philanthropy leaders. With that kind of wealth comes unprecedented giving power: you have the world’s biggest foundation — the Wal-Mart of the global charity sector — and you’ve got the single most powerful leadership platform in philanthropy today. “One out of every 10 foundation dollars spent is going to have the Gates name on it, and that gives (Gates and his foundation) an influence that is impossible to calculate,” says Rick Cohen, the former executive director of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

Spielberg Group Gives $1M to Pennsylvania Jewish Museum

PHILADELPHIA, PA – A foundation created by Stephen Spielberg is giving $1 million to the National Museum of American Jewish History.

The money from the Righteous Persons Foundation will go toward a new, five-story museum building being built in Philadelphia.

With the donation, officials say the museum’s capital campaign has raised $111 million toward its $150 million goal. The new museum is set to open in 2010.

Spielberg helped establish the Righteous Persons Foundation in 1994 after directing his Oscar-winning Holocaust film ”Schindler’s List.”

The museum was established in 1976 and is dedicated to telling the story of the American Jewish experience. It is constructing the new building in hopes of raising its profile and increasing the number of visitors.

By Associated Press

Horizon of Hope to Raise Money for Breast Cancer Initiatives

NEWARK, OH – The Longaberger Company is kicking off its 2008 Horizon of Hope campaign with a special offer that will enable customers to buy Horizon of Hope products at a 20 percent discount while also supporting American Cancer Society breast cancer research and education initiatives.

The campaign features a Horizon of Hope Basket and other products that Longaberger designs exclusively for the fundraising effort. $2 of proceeds from each Horizon of Hope Basket, accessory set, or set of travel mugs go to the American Cancer Society.

The campaign is from July 1 through August 31, with the discount on Horizon of Hope products available from July 1 through July 16.

Buffett is Amazed His Charity Auction Lunch Drew a $2.1M Bid

A Chinese investment fund manager’s bid for the chance to have lunch with billionaire Warren Buffett was the largest ever in a charity auction on eBay and surprised even Buffett.

”It kind of blew me away,” Buffett said Tuesday.

Zhao Danyang of the Hong Kong-based Pureheart China Growth Investment Fund won the auction, which ended Friday evening with a bid of $2,110,100.

The Oracle of Omaha said the size of Zhao’s bid doesn’t mean the meal will stretch past the three hours Buffett usually spends with auction winners.

All of the auction’s proceeds go to the Glide Foundation, which provides social services to the poor and homeless in San Francisco.

Charity fulfills 150,000th dream for ill children

Make-A-Wish Foundation also mounts new drive to reach more children – Twenty-seven years after granting the wish of a terminally ill 7-year-old, the Make-A-Wish Foundation on Tuesday made its 150,000th dream come true.

To celebrate the milestone, the charity has launched a new campaign called “Destination Joy,” presented by Lays brand potato chips. The campaign encourages people to give their money, time and talent to the organization and to help it fulfill its objective of granting a wish to every one of the 25,000 children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses every year in the United States.

Currently, the foundation grants one wish every 41 minutes, but is able to fulfill the dreams of only about half of the children diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses every year.

Dr. Farmer’s Remedy For World Health

The great innovators of our time are said to be the titans of technology – the inventors of the microchip, the founders of Microsoft, the guys behind Google. But far from Silicon Valley another great thinker and innovator is changing the world with far less fanfare. His name is Dr. Paul Farmer.

As Byron Pitts reports, more than 20 years ago Dr. Farmer and a few other great minds created a charity called “Partners In Health.” In the years since, they revolutionized the delivery of healthcare worldwide, saving millions of lives in places where no one thought there was any reason for hope.

“The idea that because you’re born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you’re born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that,” Farmer tells Pitts.

JCPenney Customers Round-up $1.3 Million for Afterschool Programs

PLANO, TX – J. C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) customers are helping provide children in their own communities with access to life-enriching afterschool programs after donating more than $840,000 during the most recent JCPenney Afterschool Fund Round-up campaign. The JCPenney Afterschool Fund contributed $500,000 in matching funds to the Round-up, providing a total of more than $1.3 million for grants to afterschool programs in JCPenney markets.

Continued support for afterschool programs reflects JCPenney’s philosophy that “Every Day Matters” and represents a key component of JCPenney’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy as outlined in “JCPenney C.A.R.E.S.,” the Company’s first CSR report that was released this month.

During the 10-day Afterschool Round-up campaign in April, JCPenney customers had the opportunity to “round up” their JCPenney purchases to the nearest whole dollar and donate the difference to the non-profit JCPenney Afterschool Fund. One hundred percent of the donations collected at each store will be used to support afterschool programs in the store’s local community, providing customers an opportunity to help children and families in their own hometowns.

Aurora Partners with Weld Food Bank to Provide Regular Donations

BOULDER, CO – Aurora Organic Dairy, a leading U.S. provider of high-quality private-label organic milk and butter, today announced a partnership with the Weld Food Bank whereby the Aurora Organic Dairy Foundation will fund regular donations of organic milk and ground beef to help feed the hungry in Weld County.

Aurora Organic Dairy kicked off the partnership this week with a donation of approximately 600 lbs. of ground beef. Local beef processor Northern Beef donated the processing of the product. Additionally, Aurora Organic Dairy will begin making regular donations of its high-quality organic milk to the Weld Food Bank from its processing plant in Platteville, Colo. In addition to the plant, Aurora Organic Dairy operates three organic dairy farms in Weld County.

“This donation couldn’t have come at a more important time for us,” said Karyl Pierpont, Resource Development Director for the Weld Food Bank. “With school just getting out for the summer, we worry about the children who depend on the free and reduced school lunch programs at their schools. These children are at risk of hunger for the next several months, and a donation like this will go a long way in helping them.”

Utahns give new smiles to children in Mexico

June 16th, 2008
A group of Utahns just returned from a humanitarian mission to Mexico with the charity Operation Smile. The charity sponsors cleft lip and cleft palate surgeries for children throughout the world.

Many Utahns have been involved for more than 25 years, and that volunteer list is growing as more groups travel to see for themselves how lives are changed.

Hundreds of children wait in line, their parents hope and wonder will our child be chosen? During one week this June, more than 130 children’s faces changed. Cleft lips and palates were fixed.

Each Operation Smile mission costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to transport people and equipment to foreign countries. That’s where corporate sponsors come in.

Joe Morton and his brother, Gordon, commit a portion of XanGo’s profits to children’s’ charities, like Operation Smile.