Happy Birthday Ellen!

Happy Birthday Ellen!

Ellen DeGeneres turns 50 this month and she only wants one thing for her birthday (well, maybe she wants more things, but she let us in on this one). Ellen has teamed up with Brad Pitt (gee, I wish I could say that one day! LOL) to help his worthy charity, Make It Right.
Come on people, let's get New Orleans back to where it should be! Brad Pitt and residents of the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans launched a national fundraising campaign to help the city recover from the lasting devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, starting with the Lower 9th Ward.
Pitt was in the Lower 9th Ward on the site of his Make It Right project's first initiative ­ 150 affordable and sustainable homes in an area leveled by Katrina that are being built in partnership with Steve Bing.
Go to their website www.makeitrightnola.org and send a contribution that will help us rebuild homes for these families -- and rebuild their lives.
In addition to high-quality, sustainable design, the project incorporates the spirit and culture of the Lower 9th Ward and encourages it to flourish.
Pitt also unveiled innovative features of www.makeitrightnola.org. Users are able to walk through houses and select which items in the house they will support with their contributions. The site also allows users to provide parts of a house on behalf of their friends and families.
Following the announcements, Pitt hosted a party for Lower 9th residents.
The party included appearances by Jerry Lee Lewis, Ivan Neville, and Fats Domino.
Earlier last year, Pitt and Bing announced at the Clinton Global Initiative that they each would match $5 million in contributions to the houses, for a total of $10 million in matching funds, and challenged others to join them in rebuilding New Orleans.

Pitt became a part-time resident of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After seeing the devastation first hand and meeting with the hardest-hit residents, he began the Make It Right project to catalyze the rebuilding of New Orleans starting with the Lower 9th Ward.
The 150-home community will address the dire need for single-family housing in the Lower 9th Ward and further spark rebuilding efforts in one of the richest cultural communities in America, an area that saw houses not just flooded by water, but swept off their foundations.
Make It Right's mission is built upon catalyzing redevelopment of the Lower 9th Ward by building a neighborhood of safe and healthy homes that incorporates modern, high-quality design and construction while preserving the spirit of the community's culture.
Make It right is committed to building 150 houses in the Lower 9th Ward; ensuring a green, affordable, sustainable, and replicable community to serve as a model for further rebuilding; including the Lower 9th Ward community as an integral part of the process; and a finance plan that ensures that residents who wish to return to the Lower 9th Ward can do so without further
financial hardship.
Core Make It Right team members include Graft, an innovative architecture firm that Pitt has collaborated with on projects around the world; William McDonough + Partners, which is developing the environmental criteria guiding the project; Cherokee Gives Back Foundation , the nonprofit arm of Cherokee, a firm that specializes in remediation and sustainable redevelopment of environmentally impaired properties; and Trevor Neilson and Nina Killeen, advisors to the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.
So, if you're a fan of Brad Pitt, want to give Ellen something for her birthday, or you know in your heart that New Orleans still needs our help and you want to give, please visit the site and make a donation. Ellen said on her show, if you can afford fifty cents, fifty dollars or fifty-thousand dollars, it all helps!
Happy Birthday Ellen!

Lisa