Soles4Souls

Bowling and Shoes -- Two beneficial charity events

Got an extra pair of shoes in your closet?
Donate them to a worthy cause...

Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Kristin Chenoweth, Parker Posey, Susan Lucci, Diane Neal, Melissa Rivers, Devon Aoki, Tamara Tunie, Stacey Bendet, Ashleigh Banfield, Viola Davis, Moby and more… have all lent their names in support of the Spring Cleaning/Million Shoe March. Soles4Souls™ Inc., the international charity that provides shoes and aid for the hurting worldwide, announced today the Spring Cleaning /Million Pair March to raise 1 million pairs of shoes and $1 million in funds to benefit the displaced people of the Sudan . Soles4Souls is asking people to each donate one pair of new or 'gently worn' shoes to this poverty and war-stricken area of the world. The first drop is scheduled for mid-February in the Refugee Camps of Southern Sudan, with more to follow throughout the year. Each celebrity on this list has personally donated a pair of shoes that will be placed on the feet of a person from the Sudan by Soles4Souls relief workers.

“Bringing sandals to remote villages will change the quality of an impoverished person’s life overnight,” said Paul Wilson, President of Soles4Souls. “Wearing shoes can stop hookworm infections, as well as cuts and puncture wounds from sharp objects that can result in permanent injury. It helps to end the cycle of pain.”

Soles4Souls needs your assistance to bring aid to these displaced people. You can participate in their campaign by: Looking into your closet and donating 1 pair of new or gently worn comfortable shoes and mailing them to a convenient drop box in many areas of the country;
Or donating $1 towards the shipment these shoes to the Sudan ($1 will pay for one pair of shoes to be delivered to Africa ). All donations are eligible for full tax credit and donations can be made through credit card or check.

To find out where to mail your shoes or make your donation visit www.giveshoes.org The goal is to raise $1 million and 1 million pairs of shoes to be sent overseas over the course of one year.

Want to bowl with some of your fave legendary NFL Players?

My kids and I are avid bowlers (I bowled a 174 last Sunday -- whoo hooo!) so I wanted to pass on this fun, and charitable, event happening between the USBC and the NFL.

USBC TO AGAIN PARTNER WITH NFL CHARITIES AT SUPER BOWLSecond annual Celebrity Bowling Classic set for Feb. 1 in Miami

(From the USBC) GREENDALE, Wis. – For the second consecutive year, the United States Bowling Congress will team up with National Football League Charities to conduct a major charity bowling event leading up to the Super Bowl.

The NFL Charities/USBC Super Bowl Celebrity Bowling Classic will take place Feb. 1 at Strike Miami. It will feature former and current NFL players – including members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame – heading up teams of amateur bowlers. Among the bowling stars participating will be USBC spokespeople Diandra Asbaty, Carolyn Dorin-Ballard and Kim Terrell.

Teams of five amateurs will bowl three games, each with a different celebrity. Prizes will be awarded to members of the top three finishing teams and all amateur entrants will receive a commemorative Super Bowl XLI bowling ball and pin. Each bowler also will receive a gift bag of official NFL equipment from Reebok. Food and beverage during the event is included.

A special youth bowling clinic featuring the USBC spokespeople will be held Jan. 31 at Strike Miami. Among the football players who participated last year were former stars Ed "Too Tall" Jones, Jerry Kramer, Kellen Winslow, Leroy Kelly, Earl Morrall, Garo Yepremian and Thomas "Hollywood" Henderson and current players Tyrone Wheatley, T.J. Duckett and Terrence Holt.

Entry fees as donations to NFL Charities of $750 per individual, $5,000 for special team entrants and $7,500 for VIP team participants are available. Registration will be from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. with the tournament to begin at 7 p.m. For further information on how to enter, contact tournament director Nick Nicolosi, at (201) 489-0049 or e-mail: n.nicolosi@verizon.net.

United States Bowling Congress
The United States Bowling Congress, as the national governing body, ensures the integrity and protects the future of the sport, provides programs and services to nearly three million adult and youth members and enhances the bowling experience.

Bowl with US

Award Ceremony

Tyra Banks, Debra Martin Chase and Silvio Horta to receive the "I Have a Dream(R) Foundation "Dream Keeper" Award this Sunday, January 28th.

Congratulations to Tyra Banks; Debra Martin Chase (producer of The Princess Diaries and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and Executive Producer of The Cheetah Girls), and Silvio Horta (Executive Producer of Ugly Betty) will receive this year’s annual “I Have a Dream”® Foundation – Los Angeles’ “Dream Keeper Award.” The “Dream Keeper Award” is presented annually to members of the community who share the foundation’s vision of a strong commitment to mentor and foster the academic development of at risk children in Los Angeles . The recipients of the “Dream Keeper Awards” are celebrated, as well as the honor and vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose words inspired the “I Have a Dream” movement.

I Have a Dream Foundation - Los Angeles (www.ihadla.org) has helped fulfill the academic dreams for over 1,000 Dreamers, sponsored students, in the Los Angeles area since it was founded in 1987. IHAD-LA “adopts” an entire first grade class in an area of the city where the dropout rate approaches 60% and provides that class with free, year-round academic and cultural programs, mentoring and tutoring from first through twelfth grades when Dreamers become eligible for college scholarships.

WHEN: Sunday, January 28, 2007, Sunset Strip House of Blues
8430 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, CA 90069

James Reynolds

James Reynolds – Committed to Community

Although known for his long-time role as Abe Carver on Days of Our Lives, James Reynolds list of charitable work seems longer than his list of Hollywood credits and, in my eyes, that’s a good thing. In James’ eyes, that’s a great thing.
Reynolds has been a regular participant with the USO on their handshake tours around the world, meeting with our soldiers. He has visited soldiers in Afghanistan, Kuwait, Italy, Spain, Pakistan, Iceland, and Cuba. These visits are especially poignant for Reynolds, who joined the Marines after high school. After boot camp he was assigned to the Information Service Office where, first stationed in Hawaii, he became a reporter for the service newspaper, The Windward Marine. Later he was sent to Vietnam and served for almost a year with a variety of units in and around Chu Lai, adding battlefield reporting to his combat duties, until a wound resulted in his discharge.

What was it like going back and seeing the troops today after you’ve served?
We do meet and greets, talk to them, sign autographs and take pictures with them. The soldiers are all very proud of their base and they always give us a tour. I was 17 years old when I served and many of these kids are the same age now. I went over with my son the first time, who was 21 at the time, and seeing him interact with them and realizing he could conceivably be where they are, I think that’s what took me back -- that’s where I spent my very early adulthood.

Why get involved with the USO?

After 9/11, I needed to do something, and the USO called me and asked me if was willing to go on the tour and I jumped at it. It was an opportunity to reconnect with the military, see how all of these young people are going through the same thing I did -- the smells are the same, the rules are the same. The primary difference is e-mail and the fact you can keep in touch. There are so many reasons to do this – to see part of history, to let the soldiers know we care. It doesn’t make no difference what your individual feelings of war are, we all need to be in support of them and support them completely without reservation.

These soldiers aren’t just there at holiday time and they aren’t just in Iraq either – there are more than 100 places around the world with military stations and those folks need to be remembered as well.

According to his bio, Reynolds has been involved in more than 300 fund raising events in the last ten years. He annually hosts a "Bowl-a-thon" in Los Angeles to benefit the National Asthma Center and a celebrity basketball game in South Pasadena for the city's schools. Haven House (a home for battered women and children in Pasadena), the PTA, YMCA, the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts, The National Asthma Center, The National Jewish Hospital, the Boy Scouts of America and numerous other national and local charities and service organizations have recognized James' work with awards and commendations.
Reynolds also remembers where he came from and, for him, that’s a small farming community of Oskaloosa, Kansas. Today, he still helps out back home.

You’re in California now, why go back and help your old hometown?

Our house has been there for 150 years since the escape from slavery and the house has been occupied constantly until my mother passed away. I feel a sense of responsibility to maintain the home. I’m still very connected with it. You can never do enough. I have an empathy for small towns.

In fact one of Reynolds' greatest honors is being named to the Kansas Historical Society's list of famous Kansans, a list that includes such notables as President Dwight Eisenhower, Amelia Earhardt, Langston Hughes, Barry Sanders, and many others. Reynolds, Lissa, their son Jed and other members of their family have established Big Men Stuff; a company that utilizes clothing items with slogan embroidered on them (such as: Big Men Don't Hit They Hug) to help in the fight against abuse.

The reason I’m very concerned about abuse is the more I read about it, the more it seemed that most of the prisoners were abused as children and those who were abused become abusers; although certainly not all abusers take that route. Now, with these clothes – it will hopefully remind men that big men don’t hit they hug; they don’t swear they care. It’s one of those things we have to do as a society. I’m pretty concerned about how much more vocal we are about caring for children than we are about acting on it. We tend to stand by and don’t want to get involved. We should be saying that we are not going to tolerate it; not going to allow another generation to continue it. It seems to me that we talk about it, but we turn a blind eye about that child across town, and we don’t seem to invest ourselves when it comes to our children.

James says the profits from Big Men Stuff will go to a variety of children’s charities.
Often, people pick one charity and become involved, but why so much?

I really feel I’ve been blessed with my success and I need to do something for other people to some degree to justify it. I live in the same world that everyone lives in and I’ve been fortunate and I need to turn that round. You have those people who show up and have their pic taken, and that’s all they can do and I do wish they can do more. There are some celebrities who have many times the money I have and haven’t donated a dime to anything and you wish they would. I really feel it’s important for us – we’ve been allowed to do a great deal.

Congratulations to James Reynolds, nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actor in a Daytime Drama Series. The 38th NAACP Image Awards will be broadcast live on Fox Television on Friday, March 2, 2007. Presented annually, the NAACP Image Awards is the nation’s premiere event celebrating the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice.

Taylor Hicks' Soul Patrol - Part Two

Taylor Hicks and the Soul Patrol Still Working Hard to Raise $

Another kudos to American Idol Taylor Hicks’ and his Soul Patrollers who helped to raise $725 more dollars for Studio by the Tracks, a small not-for-profit art studio in Irondale, Alabama that helps autistic adults. Read the blurb on Taylor Hicks’ blog, Gray Charles.

Read my article about Studio by the Tracks here. Ila Faye Miller is doing great work there!

Taylor will also be the 2007 Honorary Chairman of the KidOne Mardi Gras Ball on Saturday, February 3, 2007, from 7 p.m. to 12 a.m. at the B&A Warehouse, 1531 1st Avenue South, in Birmingham, Alabama. For more event information, visit www.kidonemardigrasball.com or call 205-978-1014. Special musical guest is The Little Memphis Blues Orchestra and tickets are $125 each. It’s for a great cause, so if you’re in the area, check them out.

According to their website, www.kidone.org, “Kid One Transport was founded in 1997 by a Hoover, Alabama firefighter to bring relief to the thousands of children who were suffering and dying from treatable and even preventable illnesses simply because their parents had no car. It began with one van in Jefferson County and has grown to cover 32 counties statewide. Read the complete history of Kid One here. This small charity has become the source of national attention from organizations such as Johnson & Johnson, the US Department of Health and Human Services and the Children’s Health Fund as a potential national model to solve the transportation dilemma for millions of children nationally. Kid One is the only organization of it’s kind in the nation. Kid One’s singular mission is to provide free rides to children under the age of 19 and expectant mothers. In almost ten years, Kid One has provided over 111,000 trips to children and expectant mothers and driven nearly 2.5 million miles. Click here for the most up-to-date trip and enrollment totals for each region served.”

And let’s not forget Kid One Patrol of Soul which began as a group of Soul Patrollers who produced a Soul Patrol cookbook to raise money for Kid One Transport, raising more than $5300 total profit so far. They then collected over 1080 Beanie Babies for the Kid One children after they couldn’t have their annual holiday party due to budget cuts. They are now working on a children’s cookbook. For more info or to join this group in their hard work, visit www.kidonepatrolofsoul.com.

Charity starts at home, yes, but then it grows and grows and grows…Soooouuullll Patroooolllll! Nice job!

George Lopez

George Lopez: The 20th Annual Great Chefs of LA™

Thought I’d share this pic with you (DSC_0102: (left to right) Mario Martinoli, George Lopez, and Rob Wilson)

George Lopez is probably one of the hardest working charity volunteers in Hollywood. He and his wife Ann are, among many other charities, national spokespersons for the National Kidney Foundation. Lopez’s wife donated a kidney to him last April. He suffered from a genetic condition that caused his kidneys to deteriorate, and needed the transplant in order to survive. Now he spreads the word about the need for early detection of kidney disease and the critical shortage of donated organs for transplantation. One fundraising event he participates in is the Great Chefs of LA Event. It was held in November and raised $150,000! Net proceeds from this year’s Great Chefs of Los Angeles™ will go to the National Kidney Foundation of Southern California, which provides direct patient care services, research fellowships, public health education, free summer camps for children, teens, and families on dialysis, minority heath outreach, and organ donor and transplant awareness. Keep up the great work George!

Valerie Smaldone

Valerie Smaldone: NY Radio Personality and Ovarian Cancer Survivor!

When I had the chance to speak with Valerie Smaldone, a radio personality who can be heard on 106.7 Lite-FM in New York from 12 to 4 p.m. EST, she gave some eye-opening advice: “Make sure you use the good things in your life, take out the good jewelry; what are you waiting for? Tomorrow you don’t know what will happen and, to put everything in perspective, life is so fragile in so many ways.”

It’s something we’ve probably heard a million times in our lives, but how often do we put the good china aside for holiday use only, save the nice perfume for that special date or wear that cute blouse only when a special occasion comes up?

Valerie knows first-hand how fragile life can be and she’s not shy about sharing her story because she hopes that her story will save more women’s lives.

Almost six years ago, when she was 41 years old, Valerie was diagnosed with early stage one ovarian cancer. She was diagnosed in April, operated on in May, and received chemo in June.

How did you find out?

I wasn’t feeling well for quite awhile, I was in Europe, in Prague, and feeling run down and that’s not like me. I had vague pains on the left side. I’m an energetic person. A CAT scan showed a large cyst on the right side. It remained the same over the next six months, but the doctors decided to take out the cyst and when he was doing that, he saw something he didn’t like. Adjacent to the cyst there was a borderline tumor to the right ovary, so he biopsied it and it came back ‘borderline.’ Everybody was shocked when he found it. The truth is, I knew something wasn’t right, whether the cancer was causing that or a general malaise I needed answers.

That’s part of the problem, right – women don’t listen to their own bodies?

No, they don’t. They need to follow their own body and no matter what, even if doctors say that I’m young, don’t worry about it. The number one thing is that you’re your own best friend and you’re responsible for your own health – only you know what you’re feeling. Get the best doc that you can in the field that you can. You’re in partnership with the doc. I’m not saying don’t respect them, but you’re in a partnership with this team. Need to be proactive.

What happened next after you were diagnosed?

The weird thing is that my sister is an oncologist – a researcher – and she actually developed the drug that I took. When it was time to have my chemo, she said, “Valerie this is my drug, I know this drug, you’ll be fine.” She defended the drug in front of the FDA 15 to 20 years go. My sister is my mentor, she piloted me through this and I was lucky I had someone like this, but once I was released into the system and had to go for tests and chemo, I had an oncologist and a surgeon and I see both twice a year, but nobody was speaking to each other! There’s paperwork and Paperwork, bureaucracy. I needed test results and needed each of them to talk to the other and communicate it all back to my original physician who can be aware of it too and on the same page. If you leave it up to them, they are overwhelmed and there’s too much paperwork and they are human.

What can we do to fix that?

Don’t be annoyed by it, be the producer of it. Be cognizant and aware and if you’re sick and not up to it, you need someone you can count on to help you through this system, because it’s overwhelming.

Why tell your story?
Now my mission is to let people know if I can get it anyone can get it. (My boyfriend) Rick’s mom passed away from ovarian cancer on September 30 and she died within two to three years of her diagnosis. The Ovarian Cancer National Alliance (OCNA http://www.ovariancancer.org/) was out of Washington and heard about me through a spokesperson thing I did. I wanted to do something, didn’t know what – but I wanted to use what I had, the airwaves, to spread awareness of OCNA, testing, doctors, etc. We did PSAs for two years and I did 15- to 30-second spots to get the message across.

What was the response to that?

I got a lot of emails. Women were very appreciative of the fact that someone was speaking about it. I read, “I had stage 3,” “My mom died of it, etc.” and everyone wanted to get the information about the disease out there. The numbers aren’t as great as breast cancer diagnosis, but half of the people who have it die – 28,000 people are diagnosed, 14,000 die – and I wanted to have women more aware that, for example, a pap test has nothing to do with ovarian cancer. I would also get responses from a younger face – we’re seeing younger and younger women diagnosed.

How are you feeling?
I feel well. My (last) test results were very good. I guess I’m considered in my remission. You don’t feel cured of cancer because it comes back so many times. I didn’t have a hysterectomy and I retained my left ovary and they removed my right – I was adamant that I wanted to retain my organs and I don’t want to give them away. The physician had my permission, if everything looked encapsulated, to take it though, but I was young. I have to be cognizant of the other ovary though.

It’s all about raising money for research. If you want to help or become more aware of ovarian cancer, visit:
the Ovarian Cancer National Foundation, http://www.ovariancancer.org/.
the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation, http://www.ocrf.org/.

Some frightening statistics from the OCNF:
Ovarian cancer, the deadliest of the gynecologic cancers, is the fifth leading cause of cancer death among U.S. women.
Ovarian cancer occurs in 1 out of 68 women.
About 20,000 women are diagnosed with the disease each year.
About 15,000 women in the United States die from ovarian cancer each year
Currently, 50 percent of the women diagnosed with ovarian cancer die from it within five years; among African-American women only 48 percent survive five years or more.

So, go ahead and get out the good china tonight while you're serving leftovers. I know I will.