Celebrity Charity Poker
Professional poker player and philanthropist Annie Duke hosted a Poker tournament to raise funds for the spcaLA and I’m Too Young For This Cancer Foundation. Duke brought together celebrities from all over the entertainment industry including actors, dancers, movie stars, and professional poker players to play in the tournament to raise money for these charities.
Celebrities and poker stars came together to play in The H.O.M.E. Foundation’s Celebrity Casino Royale poker tournament, raising money and awareness for wonderful charities including spcaLA and the I’m Too Young For This Cancer Foundation.
Professional Poker Player, WSOP Winner, Author and “Celebrity Apprentice” star Annie Duke came out ready to play poker and raise money for charity. Celebrities battled against Annie Duke with the casino crowd cheering her on. Unfortunately, Annie Duke did not make it to the Final Table, getting outplayed by celebrities including Dancing with the Stars alumni Shannon Elizabeth and ABC’s “Off the Map” star Nicholas Gonzalez – both made it to the Final Table.
WWE Superstar Mike “The Miz” Mizanin, a natural crowd pleaser, threw down some good hands, along with other guest celebrities including actors Benito Martinez, Michael Gladis, Carl Weathers, Josh Henderson and Corey Feldman, among others. Some reality stars fared well against the poker pros including “Survivor” winner Judson Birza, “Real Housewives of Orange County” stars Alexis and Jim Bellino and “Amazing Race” contestants and Pro Poker Players Maria Ho and Tiffany Michelle.
But at Celebrity Casino Royale, the real winners are the benefiting charities – spcaLA and the I’m Too Young For This Cancer Foundation. According to Frank Verdugo, president of The H.O.M.E. Foundation and event host, the event raised much needed funds and awareness for amazing causes while bringing together pokers stars and celebrities for a night of great entertainment. The H.O.M.E. Foundation committed to raising $200,000 for the charities and is well on its way achieving that goal.
Celebrity Casino Royale featured a casino area including blackjack and roulette tables, along with the main attraction, a poker tournament. Over 100 poker stars, celebrities and VIP guests competed in the tournament for a chance to win fabulous grand prizes including Original Steve Soffa Watches, a Buy In to the WSOP and a $13,000 European Vacation, among trips to Dublin, Scotland, Italy and Costa Rica.
Recycle for Breast Cancer Fundraising Program: Helping Individuals and Businesses Dispose of E-waste
Recycle for Breast Cancer is actively trying to alleviate two problems at once: breast cancer research and dangerous waste in landfills. For every piece of e-waste the Recycle for Breast Cancer (RFBC) group receives a donation will be made to breast cancer research. Visit their website linked below to receive free prepaid shipping boxes for you or your company’s e-waste.
Recycle for Breast Cancer is a no-cost, national fundraising program to help the fight against breast cancer while benefiting the environment. You can collect cell phones, pagers, Palm Pilots, inkjet & toner cartridges and surplus supplies. Our goal is to keep these items out of the landfills by recycling and putting them back to use while raising funds for a great cause!
RFBC announces a no-cost fundraising program to benefit the fight against breast cancer that everyone can participate in.
Every day millions of old cell phones and empty printer cartridges are thrown away and end up in our nation’s landfills. The Recycle for Breast Cancer program collects these cartridges, prepares them for recycling while raising money to help support breast cancer research. For every cartridge and cell phone recycled through this program a donation is made to a national breast cancer foundation.
Program Manager, Larry Behrens, says “This program is an opportunity for anyone to support a great cause and help protect the environment at the same time. It has two great benefits – we are raising money to fight breast cancer while providing a much needed recycling service to the community. The best part of the program is that anyone can participate without incurring any cost!”
RFBC has developed an online collection program that allows individuals as well as businesses to participate by donating cell phones and printer cartridges. Free prepaid shipping labels or boxes are provided.
The program has been very successful because what we are asking for most people consider being trash. In today’s economic environment collecting financial contributions is very difficult.
Using www.recycleforbreastcancer.org you can request shipping materials, collection bins and other marketing materials to make your collection efforts a success!
For more information please reference this article
Computer mogul turned philanthropist Bill Gates is continuing his charitable efforts around the globe; this time focusing on vaccines for children to help treat pneumonia and diarrhoea. The UK and Gates have both donated over $1 billion each along with other countries worldwide which is expected to help some $1.4 million children in poorer nations.
By Rachael Brown
The United Kingdom and philanthropist Bill Gates are leading a multi-billion-dollar international campaign to vaccinate children in poorer nations.
Meeting in London for the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) summit, politicians, charities, private companies and philanthropists pledged more than $4 billion to the campaign.
It is estimated pneumonia and diarrhoea kill three times more children under five worldwide than malaria and HIV/AIDS combined.
Experts say the death toll is so high because developing countries cannot afford vaccines.
The UK led the pledges by boosting its commitment by $US1.3 billion, which was matched by Mr Gates.
Australia tripled its current commitment to $200 million, with Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd declaring: “My name’s Kevin, I’m from Australia, and I’m here to help.”
“This will help vaccinate more than 80 million children and save 1.4 million lives,” British prime minister David Cameron told the conference, winning a standing ovation from the audience.
“We are pledging an additional billion dollars,” Mr Gates said, adding that the money would be spread over the next five years.
“It’s not every day that we give away a billion, but for a cause like this, it’s exciting to be doing this.”
Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline has agreed to sell a diarrhoeal vaccine at cost price to poorer nations, and some other firms have since made similar moves.
The funding will allow more than 250 million of the world’s poorest children to be vaccinated by 2015 and would prevent more than 4 million premature deaths, GAVI said.
GAVI says it has helped prevent more than 5 million child deaths in the past decade with its immunisation programs.
The alliance funds bulk-buys of childhood vaccines against diseases such as pneumococcal pneumonia, Haemophilus influenzae type b or Hib disease, diphtheria, pertussis or whooping cough, tetanus, measles and rotavirus.
Read more http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/14/3242885.htm
Supermodel has soft spot for wildlife
Veronica Varekova reflects on her work for African Wildlife Federation
Cause Celeb highlights a celebrity’s work on behalf of a specific cause. This week, we speak with supermodel Veronica Varekova about her work with the African Wildlife Foundation.
Varekova moved to the United States from the Czech Republic at age 19 to pursue a degree. She was quickly recruited by a modeling agency and has since appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue eight times. In 2009, Varekova was named one of the first Goodwill Ambassadors for the African Wildlife Foundation. In that role, she helped the foundation in its mission to conserve large landscapes, protect endangered species and empower local communities throughout the African continent.
Varekova’s first mission took her to Rwanda in December 2009, with fellow Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stein. While there, they both helped AWF conclude their celebration of the “Year of the Gorilla.” We spoke with Varekova about her love of nature and her upcoming projects.
Interviewed by Elizabeth Chang
Q: You were just named the first Goodwill Ambassador for the African Wildlife Foundation. How did you become so passionate about the foundation and Africa?
Varekova: I was enchanted by my first trip to Africa, which was years and years ago. I’ve been going there pretty much every other year. If it was for work, or for a trip, I just really look forward to it, and I’ve never had a boring or uneventful trip. It’s just such a beautiful, beautiful continent, and every and each country of Africa has shown culture, such a profound culture, and obviously the wildlife, something that you really have to be there to experience it.
You can take pictures, you can see it on the TV on “Animal Planet,” but once you’re there, it just takes you in. I think, to me, it happened… my first trip when I was there in Tanzania. I was in Africa for a totally different purpose. I was climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and somebody who knew about African Wildlife Foundation and is a friend of mine had put me in touch with them. So, I spent one week, once I descended from Kilimanjaro with the African Wildlife people in Tanzania in Tarangire (National Park), and we continued to go to the Serengeti National Park, where I met with lion researcher Bernard Kissui, and he explained his work in the field.
Then, the people were introducing me to the philosophy and the mission that African Wildlife has in Africa. I was amazed and when I returned to New York, I went to visit them in Washington, D.C., and we were talking and talking. At the end, we realized that I could learn so much and be part of something that really inspired me, and they could benefit from it by me raising the profile of their foundation and illuminating the mission that they have in Africa, and so basically we began our journey.
Q: What will your duties be as a Goodwill Ambassador?
Varekova: It’s pretty much what the description of ambassador is. You really want to bring the attention to African Wildlife and their work in Africa, and pretty much illuminating what they do there, and introducing them to, whether it is, media or friends. Just raising profile, and also hopefully, help them make some funds, too.
Read more http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43402839/ns/us_news-giving/
Duggars lend helping hand in Joplin
’19 Kids and Counting’ family members pitch in to help tornado-devastated Mo. town
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their 19 children, Josh, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jedidiah, Jeremiah, Jason, James, Juston, Jackson, Johanna, Jennifer, Jordyn-Grace and Josie, all have a roof over their heads.
The same can’t be said for thousands of residents of Joplin, Mo., who were fortunate enough to survive the devastating tornado that pulverized much of the town of 49,000.
So when word spread that a monster tornado had just hit Joplin, several members of Duggar clan sprang into action to help.
“We heard about the tornado from some friends of ours in that direction,” eldest son Josh Duggar told msnbc.com by telephone Thursday. “They called us and said, ‘Hey, a tornado just touched down.’”
The Duggars, of reality TV show “19 Kids & Counting” fame, live in Tontitown-Springdale area in northwest Arkansas — 18 kids and their parents in one house and Josh and his wife and young daughter in another nearby. They are about 75 miles south of Joplin.
Josh, 23, who has past volunteer firefighting experience, and siblings John, Jana and Jill, active volunteer firefighters with first-responder training, decided to head to Joplin shortly after the tornado hit Sunday night. Their father, Jim Bob, along with younger siblings Jessa, Jinger, Joseph and Josiah, accompanied them.
Story: Relief groups seek relief from disaster onslaught
The family members set out in a three-car caravan loaded with supplies including bottled water, flashlights, batteries, Gatorade, dried snacks and ponchos. When they arrived in Joplin, they were immediately put to work.
The younger Duggars handed out supplies, while the ones with emergency training combed the streets looking for survivors amid the collapsed houses.
Read more http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43186230/ns/us_news-giving/
Government increasingly relying on private partners to spread American principles
By Jim Gold
When IBM executive Chandu Visweswariah went to Rio de Janeiro as part of a volunteer team to help city officials plan to host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Summer Olympics, he found himself immersed in a mash-up of a corporate Peace Corps and “The Apprentice.”
“It’s a little of both but without Donald Trump to fire anybody,” Visweswariah said, noting the team had just a few weeks to accomplish many tasks that will help both events succeed.
Visweswariah and his teammates, who worked in Rio as part of an IBM program that encourages employee volunteerism, are the foot soldiers of a growing corporate cadre in the U.S. foreign aid program. And with foreign aid programs increasingly under fire in Congress, they are seen as an increasingly important force that could fuel innovation and greater productivity in the government’s efforts to win friends overseas.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Agency for International Development unveiled a program to make it easier for more companies of all sizes to send professionals abroad to help local governments, small businesses and civic groups in developing nations. The new Center of Excellence for International Corporate Volunteerism was developed with IBM and CDC Development Solutions (CDS), a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that manages companies international volunteer initiatives.
USAID will pay CDS $743,076 over two years to launch the program’s website and get it operational. IBM will pay CDS $4.1 million in cash and in-kind donations of technology, materials and expertise and 100 employees.
Sharp increase in corporate volunteerism
CDS estimates that 21 major U.S. companies plan to send nearly 2,000 employee volunteers abroad this year, up from six firms that sent just 280 workers to four countries in 2006. Since then corporate volunteers have worked in 58 countries, CDS estimates, based on company surveys.
Since 2008, IBM has spent $25 million to send 1,100 employees on more than 100 missions in 20 countries through its Corporate Service Corps, said Ari Fishkind, a company spokesman.
Besides Rio, teams have traveled to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to help the city develop strategies in public transportation, water supply and food safety, and gone on multiple missions to Africa, working with local organizations in South Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya to support programs that drive economic development. In Ghana, for example, a team worked on a technical school’s website and student record database, improved an electric company’s computer network and aided in technology to better educate disadvantaged youths.
Each six-to-10 member IBM team spent more than two months in preparation, one month on location and more than two months after their return, wrapping up projects and mentoring other volunteers, IBM said. More than 10,000 employees have applied to participate in the program.
IBM, which has nearly 427,000 employees, acknowledges that projects may occasionally lead to commerce, such as when the government of Cross River State in Nigeria last year hired IBM to assist with two social welfare and health care initiatives. But Big Blue, which last year reported net income of $14.8 billion on revenue of $99.9 billion, said that’s not the objective of its Corporate Service Corps.
Among other companies with new volunteer programs are Dow Corning’s Citizen Service Corps, whose pilot project in Bangalore, India, is focused on energy, social enterprises and low-income housing, and drug maker Novartis International, whose Entrepreneurial Leadership Program sent teams to Tanzania and the Philippines to work with NGOs and government agencies on health care initiatives.
USAID says the new program will allow other companies to leverage the expertise of IBM and others to set up or expand international volunteer programs.
The independent federal agency is rooted in the post-World War II European reconstruction program known as the Marshall Plan. With its $21.9 billion budget facing cuts by Congress, USAID is under pressure to spend taxpayers’ money more efficiently. Teaming with corporations will mean deploying more high-level expertise faster, cheaper and quicker to USAID’s beneficiaries, who in turn eventually may become self-sustainable, agency officials say.
“It is our hope that these resources will drive innovation and allow us to achieve a greater return on investments,” Bambi Arellano, counselor to USAID, said in a statement announcing the partnership.
Volunteers will work on food security, sustainable economic growth, global climate adaptation, health, education, information technology and urban development, the agency said.
‘Jumping on the bandwagon’
To Ian Vásquez, director of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based market-liberal think tank that has called for the abolition of USAID, the agency is “jumping on a bandwagon a little too late … to approximate what occurs in the market.”
“Corporations already are doing philanthropic and private foreign aid that far surpasses what the agency does itself,” Vásquez said. “It smells very much like a development fad. The aid agency has been dogged by problems of effectiveness and accountability — a problem with international aid in general.”
But Carol Adelman, who was an assistant administrator at USAID in charge of foreign aid for Asia, the Middle East and central and eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, said corporate involvement in U.S. foreign aid efforts is nothing new.
“We had a bank of volunteers,” she said, referring to the Washington, D.C.-based International Executive Service Corps. “They were invaluable to me in helping on projects when we needed to have that language skill.”
Adelman is now director of the Center for Global Prosperity, tracking private-sector philanthropy at the Washington, D.C.-based Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan research organization.
She called USAID’s new program “a smart move because of the battle over the budget” in Congress. Teaming with corporations will save money and boost peer-to-peer relationships that will help build understanding of America and its principles.
Companies know that donating human resources now to efforts around the world may not immediately improve their bottom lines, but long term these efforts could help grow their supply chains and increase the global marketplace for their products, officials said. Also, both government and private-sector officials said they follow the presumption that prosperous democracies tend not to go to war with one another, thereby creating environment where commerce can flourish.
That concept was touted as long ago as 1957, when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Congress that the Eisenhower administration would prefer to see private capital eventually replace foreign-aid funds in overseas economic development, according to a Time magazine report at the time.
Read the full article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43190484/ns/us_news-giving/
NEW YORK — Drug companies helped drive an almost 18 percent increase in corporate philanthropy last year as they gave away medicine to poor Americans still struggling in a rough economy, a survey found on Thursday.
The Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy poll of 110 companies found they gave $13 billion in cash and products last year as the United States began to emerge from recession.
While 40 percent of the 110 companies — polled annually for the past four years — boosted their giving last year by more than 10 percent, another 17 percent decreased their giving by more than 10 percent compared to 2009.
“We’re seeing companies build back,” said Alison Rose, the committee’s manager of standards and measurement. “From 2008 to 2009 we saw 60 percent of companies decrease giving, so now from 2009 to 2010 we’re seeing 65 percent increase giving.”
She said more than half of the $2 billion increase in corporate philanthropy last year came from pharmaceutical companies donating medicine through their Patient Assistance Programs and investing in other initiatives.
For more information http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43254951/ns/us_news-giving/
Half the fun of having more money than you know what to do with is giving it away. Don’t take our word for it — just ask billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have pledged to leave their huge fortunes to charity (sorry, kids!). Others have opted to give back in more creative ways, like the billionaire who has used his wealth to save… lemurs. Don’t ask, just click.
Big Givers: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates
Charitable Donation: The Giving Pledge
The two billionaires recently founded The Giving Pledge, an altruistic initiative that encourages the super rich to donate a majority of their wealth to charitable organizations of their choice. Gates and Buffet obviously set the example for their fellow billionaires, making official pledges to give their vast fortunes to charity. Super rich folks like Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Barron Hilton apparently love The Giving Pledge concept; they’ve already signed on to donate most of their money. The only people who probably aren’t impressed by The Giving Pledge are the children of these generous tycoons, who are getting much less now.
A place where girls matter
In Kenya’s largest slum, the Kibera School for Girls is providing little girls with the chance of their lives—a refuge from abuse and hunger.
By Marisa BuchananNBC News producer
updated 5/20/2011 10:58:54 PM ET
Dreams are a luxury few can afford in Kenya’s largest slum. That is, until you turn the corner, walk down a small alleyway and arrive at a bright pink and blue makeshift building. Little girls in bright red sweaters and bright blue skirts are running around, giggling and playing, indoors and out. And when you look at the mud on their shoes, or the tin houses that surround the school, you come to realize that 60 little girls are getting the chance of their lives and they know it. This is the Kibera School for Girls – a refuge from abuse and hunger.http://shininghopeforcommunities.org/projects/ksg/
Girls in Kibera generally don’t have a lot of reason to sing or play. Like most young girls in extreme poverty all over the world, they have little value in their communities. They mostly can’t afford school, are highly vulnerable to sexual crime at any early age and, up until recently, http://www.girlup.org/have received the least amount of attention from international NGOs. The cover of the ECONOMIST in 2010 was stark: GENDERCIDE What happened to 100 million baby girls? http://www.economist.com/node/15606229
Maria Menounos and I were shocked by the statistics, especially because the solutions can be so simple. If they are lucky enough to have access to a school, and to stay there, girls have less risk for exposure to HIV, are less likely to get married early or get pregnant, and are more likely to fight for their own rights, raise healthy children of their own and enter the workforce. This very concept has been highlighted in a compelling campaign by the NIKE foundation. http://www.girleffect.org/video ‘The Girl Effect” campaign argues that girls can be game changers in the economic development of a country if they get help them bypassing the extreme challenges they face from birth. It’s also what many other organizations including CARE, the organization we traveled with, are focused on entirely. http://www.care.org/
In many communities where resources are already stretched to the breaking point, girls are generally last in line. But simple interventions, like the one we showed last night that created a sports program only open to girls, can have profound impact – and the increase in the self-confidence that these young girls display when they come to believe in their own strength and physicality is dramatic. There are more fundamental limitations to women and girls growth though. In the US, there were “head and master” laws on the books till the 1970’s that gave the husband say over most family decisions. Many still exist in countries all over the world. In Kenya, women do 70 percent of the agriculture work but under five percent actually own land.
The school featured in our Making a Difference report has taught the community to invest in the education of their girls. The families invest in their girls’ education, and contribute time to the school and, by doing so, the entire family receives health care, access to clean water and even clean toilets they don’t have to pay to use.
One of the co founders of the Kibera school for girls, Kennedy Odede told me: “People see hope and people are really surprised. And most are overwhelmed, because it’s unbelievable. There’s no way an organization in the slum can be able to do this amazing thing, you know. There’s no way our girls could get an education. No way to get a health clinic. What I really love is that I kind of show a hope to those who are hopeless, who never went to school. There’s a better life for you.”
He should know. He’s from there. He grew up watching the young girls around him sell sex for food because even someone without an education or any job prospects still needs to eat.
And that’s why the school is one of the most remarkable places I have ever visited. The founders not only continue to teach the community girls have value but they have also given these little girls a safe place to dream. As Kennedy said,” They have passed through horrors. I am welcoming them back to a world they never lived in, to a world where they are important.”
For more information please visit http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43112010/ns/nightly_news-making_a_difference/
Confronted with an unprecedented string of tornadoes, floods and wildfires, the American Red Cross and other relief groups are scrambling to raise money fast enough to meet the demand for help.
“The disasters just keep coming,” said Red Cross spokesman Roger Lowe, reporting that the organization has spent $41 million thus far responding to the seven-week onslaught while raising $33.6 million to cover the costs.
Those figures were tallied before the latest violent storm system rampaged through a wide swath of the Midwest starting late Tuesday.
No single one of the recent disasters — not even the cataclysmic tornado in Joplin, Mo., on Sunday — poses a challenge on the scale that the Red Cross confronted after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. However, Red Cross officials said the period that began March 31 is unique in their memory for the sheer number of major natural disasters in such a short span.
During that period, the Red Cross has launched 29 separate relief operations in 22 states, responding to wildfires in Texas, flooding along swollen rivers, and the rash of tornadoes that have killed more than 500 people. More than 9,200 Red Cross disaster-responders have been deployed; they’ve served more than 2.1 million meals and snacks, and opened more than 200 shelters.
Lowe said costs are running high in part because of the long-term effects of many of these home-destroying disasters. For example, he said 93 people were still living in Red Cross shelters in Alabama, where tornadoes wrecked their homes a month ago.
Continue reading: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43173326/ns/us_news-giving/
