When a Georgia teen learned that babies staying in the newborn intensive care unit (NICU) only received two hours a day with their parents during the pandemic, she knew she wanted to help provide some extra comfort to the infants. Bryn Hammock, 18, a Girl Scout since she was in kindergarten, had been looking for an inspiring project to help her earn the Gold Award, the organization’s highest honor, and knew helping NICU babies was the right choice.
Hammock’s grandmother, a pediatric nurse, told her about hand-shaped gloves filled with beads often placed with NICU babies, so the infants feel like their mothers are holding them. Preemies in the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) need a touch from mom or dad, but when parents can’t be there, “Tiny Hugs” are a good substitute.
The soft, snuggly mittens, weighted inside with a pound of poly bead stuffing, are used to help these early arrivals feel like they’re still in the womb. Mothers are asked to wear the glove close to their own bodies so the fabric will retain her unique smell, which is calming to an infant. And the weighted hands are also helpful for holding tubes and assorted wires in the hospital.
Some hospitals in the Atlanta area had the gloves, but the facilities near Bryn were looking for more. Despite not knowing how to sew and the lockdown just starting, Hammock set her sights on helping the NICU babies. She raised funds for all of the sewing supplies and created a pattern for the stuffed gloves — which she calls Tiny Hugs.
Hammock spent a year learning to sew and gathering a team to make weighted mittens. The teen crafted several Tiny Hugs herself and with her mom’s help, created a how-to video so that a team of 18 volunteers could help make even more. The volunteer team planned to make 30 Tiny Hugs but ended up sewing 140. Bryn distributed the gloves to seven Georgia hospitals, including the one where she was born.
Bryn received several thank you letters from hospitals that received her team’s Tiny Hugs and the project earned her the Girl Scouts’ Gold Award. Bryn says “It felt really good to earn the award doing this. I’m the third generation girl scout and the third in my family to do it. I love babies and kids, so this was just a perfect project for me. It felt really good.” The high school senior will head to Auburn University in the fall and plans to do something in the medical field.
Read more
A Japanese-American interment camp from the Second World War in Colorado has been folded into the care of the National Park Service. As a new National Historic Site, the Amache Internment Camp is now part of the Service’s commitment to tell the entire story of American history. The camp has been preserved for years by local students,the Amache Preservation Society (APS), a group of volunteer students from the local school district in southeast Colorado, led for 30 years by John Hopper.
Hopper, a social studies teacher in 1993, was teaching some students who turned a one-time class project speaking with a survivor of the camp into a preservation society. The focus was on giving class presentations, operating a museum, and maintaining the site—which holds a large collection of government-issue barracks where thousands of Japanese Americans were detained. According to the National Park Service, the center was more commonly known as “Camp Amache.”
It was one of 10 centers constructed in the US during World War II for the purpose of interning Japanese Americans and people of Japanese descent. More than 10,000 people passed through Camp Amache and it housed over 7,300 internees at its peak. Two-thirds of those housed were U.S. citizens. Now, the Granada Relocation Center site consists of a cemetery, a monument, building foundations, and landscaping. Hopper is now Dean of Students but students from the same school still run tours of the site, mow the lawns, and even pursue occasional excavations under the supervision of the University of Denver.
The APS works on presentations to other schools; in recent years, also began organizing trips to Japan to stay with host families and do their presentations in Japanese high schools. In 2006, Amache was designated a historic landmark and was recently designated a National Historic Site. The new designation transfers the responsibility and ownership of the town of Granada to the National Park Service. National Park Service Director Chuck Sams said “The National Park Service will continue working closely with key stakeholders dedicated to the preservation of Amache, including the APS, to preserve and interpret this significant historic site to the public.”
Read more
Gamers and the video game industry are renowned for being extraordinarily generous with fundraisers for many charities. Several game companies have been raising funds and pitching in millions for Ukrainian relief programs. Epic Games, the developer of the hugely successful video game Fortnite, has revealed it’s raised $144 million.
On March 20th, in conjunction with Microsoft’s Xbox, the firm pledged to donate all of its proceeds from the game to Ukraine relief efforts for two weeks. The charities receiving the funds include UNICEF, Direct Relief, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Program.
Epic Games, headquartered in Cary, North Carolina, announced the fundraising effort on the same day it released a new season of Fortnite Battle Royale and raised $36 million in the first 24 hours. The fundraising window closed on April 3, shortly before they announced the grand total of donations raised.
Epic’s fund raising campaign follows Humble Bundle – a firm that sells video game bundles online – raising $20 million for Ukraine relief efforts last month. Humble Bundle’s pay-what-you-want model for their game, book, and course bundles have raised more than $200 million through 12 million purchases. Their donations have benefitted charities such as Make a Wish, One Tree Planted, the ACLU, Girls Who Code, and Charity: Water.
Microsoft, the makers of Xbox, committed over $35 million to support humanitarian assistance and relief efforts for Ukraine. Microsoft is also matching employee donations by 2:1, resulting in more than $13.5 million raised to date in support of organizations working both within Ukraine and supporting refugees who have fled to neighboring countries.
From March 5 to March 12, League of Legends developer Riot Games donated all proceeds from battle pass sales for VALORANT, Legends of Runeterra, Teamfight Tactics, and Wild Rift, as well as the new Bee skin line in League of Legends, will be donated to support humanitarian relief efforts in the region. They raised over $5.4 Million and in addition to the player supported fundraiser, donated $1M across three humanitarian nonprofits; International Medical Corps, Doctors Without Borders and Polish Red Cross.
Read more
The teen driver from a viral video of his truck being tossed and flipped around in a tornado has been gifted a brand new truck. Just days after 16-year-old Riley Leon’s fateful crossing of paths with one of more than a dozen twisters that struck Texas Bruce Lowrie Chevrolet dealership in Fort Worth, Texas announced they were giving him a brand new vehicle.
In the video captured by a passerby, a funnel cloud and debris spin around Leon, his red Chevrolet Silverado is flipped on its side, rotated around once, and then flipped back upright again — and Leon continues driving. Leon had been interviewed by local news outlets and said he had just finished applying for a job at Whataburger.
“Everything was going good, it was a nice good day for me, then, out of nowhere, the twister came. It just happened so fast. It looks like I drove off but in reality I didn’t; I just landed in the center of the road and I was just driving to get off on the side of the road” he said. Elgin Police Dept. Commander Aaron Crim, said he spoke to Leon after the incident and asked Leon if he was okay. “He just kinda shook his head and didn’t really answer me. After seeing the video, now I understand why he had just come out with a blind stare,” Crim said. “He was probably scared to death.”
Leon’s truck was totaled but he appeared to be okay. Leon originally did not go to the hospital after the incident, because the family does not have health insurance and nothing appeared to be physically wrong with him. Unfortunately, he began to experience body aches and severe back pain, as one would expect after, after the shock wore off.
When he went to school he ended up leaving early due to severe back pain so Leon’s mom came to pick him up and took him to the hospital. The doctors found fractures to the teen’s back. A GoFundMe set up by Leon’s school nurse for his medical bills surpassed its goal of $30,000-raising over $43,000 so far.
When Bruce Lowrie Chevrolet heard of Leon’s story on the news they decided to give him a new one. Riley and his family have received a brand new 2022 Chevrolet Silverado LT All Star Edition in Cherry Red along with a $15,000 check that was presented to him. The dealership made the announcement on their Facebook page “We are thankful Riley is safe, commend his driving skills during a frightening situation, and our hearts are with other families in Texas that have been affected by these storms.”
Read more
An Atlanta teen is raising money for a friend’s recovery from a traumatic brain injury during a football game. Marcos San Miguel and Jordan Sloan have been best friends since 6th grade. The two bonded over their love of sports, San Miguel is a star on the basketball court and Sloan on the football field. Sloan was 15 when he took a hit in the 3rd quarter of the homecoming football game at Pace Academy in September 2020.
Sloan walked off the field but was rushed to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta where he underwent brain surgery. Jordan had suffered a very rare brain stem injury that made it difficult for doctors to give a prognosis for his recovery. He would remain hospitalized there for the next several months before being moved to the Shepherd Center for rehabilitation.
His recovery has been a long road from being on a ventilator and unable to blink to doing rigorous physical therapy and taking virtual classes back at school. Sloan goes to rehabilitation sessions 6 days a week to regain his mobility and strength-with the goal of being able to one day play sports again.
San Miguel has been by his best friend’s side cheering him on and found a way to support him through basketball. San Miguel began taking pledges for every charge he took in a basketball game, in order to give Sloan’s family the money necessary to buy items not covered by insurance, like a manual wheelchair and reformer machine. He said “I really just wanted to do whatever I could to help. He would have done something similar for me.”
So far, he has raised over $14,000 through his fundraiser “Take a Charge for Jordan Sloan”. The remainder of all funds raised will go to Shepherd Center for their Adaptive Sports program.
San Miguel hopes that once Jordan has a manual wheelchair and reaches a few new therapy goals, he can arrange for a wheelchair basketball game for Jordan and some of our former teammates. Sloan’s mother, Jasmine Jamieson said she is grateful for the way San Miguel has stepped up to help and while she doesn’t know if she will ever be able to really thank him- she will try for the rest of her life.
Read more
After two tornadoes touched down leaving a path of destruction in New Orleans, rapper and entrepreneur, Master P sent a crew from his foundation to help clean up his hometown. Team Hope helped clean the streets of New Orleans, retrieved items from homes that suffered damage, and provided assistance to senior citizens as they completed damage claim forms.
Master P, whose real name is Percy Robert Miller, is a proud New Orleans native and has consistently shown up for his city. This time was no exception, his crew was on site the morning after the tornadoes to help assist with clean up efforts. They also handed out water and food to displaced residents.
Master P said “It happens so much and you don’t want to get used to it, but it just happens so much. New Orleans is a place that we just have to keep getting back up and be thankful for everyday of life. Anybody else across the country that’s experiencing any type of thing where you say to yourself ‘I’m not where I want to be at..’ New Orleans is a place where you could have a house one day and then it’ll be gone and all your stuff is outside on the road. We are stronger together and we’re going to get through this.”
He added “It’s a blessing to be able to be out there, especially for the elderly. We’re making sure the elderly have wheelchairs, glasses, food, water. I want to thank everybody for supporting us and getting out there and volunteering because without us coming together, this wouldn’t happen so quick.”
Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana declared a state of emergency in four parishes in the New Orleans area after the National Weather Service confirmed that two tornadoes had hit the area: one in Lacombe, north of the city across Lake Pontchartrain, and another that tore through both the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
One person was killed, hundreds injured and over 8,000 were left without power after the storm. Search-and-rescue crews surveyed heavily damaged homes and debris-filled streets after tornadoes ripped through the New Orleans area. The weather service rated the St. Bernard tornado was at least an EF-3, characterized by wind speeds of 136 to 165 mph, making it the most powerful tornado to hit the region since 2017.
Read more
A rare kind of reunion recently took place at Houston Methodist Hospital. Five strangers who received a donated kidney meet the five strangers who volunteered a kidney. They are linked in a life-saving kidney swap that involved 10 people and it has left them with a life-long bond. With all its complexities from matching antibodies to patient health, a kidney swap is where your loved one needs a kidney, but you’re not a match. So you donate to someone else in exchange for one that is a match.
The chain of the swap is similarly complex and intertwines them all by a sacrifice to save a loved one. Michael Wingard, 20, donated his kidney to 30-year-old Heather O’Neil. Because Michael is donating a kidney that will go to Heather, her twin sister, Staci, donates a kidney to a 47-year-old man named Javier Ramirez Ochoa while Lisa Jolivet, a 43-year-old mother of three, donates one that matches up with Michael’s friend, Kaelyn Connelly, so that Lisa’s 72-year-old mother, Barbara Moton, can receive a kidney from 67-year-old David McLellan, who donated so that his son Chris, who is 31, can receive a kidney from 33-year-old Tomas Martinez so that Javier Ramirez Ochoa can receive that kidney from Staci O’Neil, Heather’s twin sister.
A swap of this size is difficult to pull off and with all the complexities to be synchronized – matching antigens, patient health and COVID – this kidney swap had already been postponed three times since December. The extraordinary 10 person life chain took place over four days. All recipients in the swap are doing well and met for the first time, with the strangers that gave the gift of life.
According to the National Kidney Foundation, there are about 100,000 people in the U.S. on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network waiting list needing a kidney yet only about 20,000 transplants are performed each year. A patient on the waiting list typically waits an average of three to five years to receive a kidney. In 2020, about 5,000 people on the list died while waiting for a match. Matching kidneys, typically donated after death, never became available.
Living donor kidney donations greatly increase the number of organs available to those still waiting for a match. Kidney swaps are an option when a patient who needs a kidney transplant has a willing donor but they aren’t a good match due to incompatible blood types. The paired exchanges give a ray of hope to life in a dire situation and free up spots on a long waiting list.
Read more
Billionaire philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed in a blog post that she has donated nearly $4 billion to 465 nonprofits including a $436 million donation to Habitat for Humanity International and 84 of its affiliates to create affordable housing. That donation is the largest publicly disclosed gift from Scott so far. Her policy is to let the organizations she donates to make the announcements in the hopes of minimizing attention. Her recent post confirmed announcements by several organizations.
The announcement brings Scott’s publicly disclosed donations to more than $12 billion since 2019. In total, Scott says she’s donated to 1,257 organizations. Scott, who is worth about $48 billion according to Forbes, signed the Giving Pledge through which many billionaires have promised to donate more than half of their wealth. Scott declines interviews and only discusses her philanthropic choices through her blog posts. Her recent post touched off a wave of nonprofits announcing their plans for the donations.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America and 21 of its affiliates received its largest gift ever from Scott— $275 million. Boys & Girls Clubs of America announced a $281 million donation similarly dispersed among local chapters of the organization. HIAS, the international Jewish humanitarian organization, said Scott donated $10 million to its campaign to raise $40 million for its emergency response in Ukraine. Community Catalyst, a healthcare reform nonprofit in Boston, announced it received $25 million and would use the funds to help “create a health system rooted in race equity and health justice.”
In her blog post, Scott said 60% of the groups she and husband Dan Jewett donated to are led by women and 75% are led by people with lived experience in the regions they support and the issues they seek to address. “Our team’s focus over these last nine months has included some new areas, but as always our aim has been to support the needs of underrepresented people from groups of all kinds. Scott believes in “supporting people directly experiencing inequities is essential, both because it is informed by insights no one else can contribute, and because it seeds power and opportunity within the community itself.”
In the newest blog post, Scott said her team is working on building a website that will include a searchable database of her grants. The expansive list of organizations that received her latest round of donations have a broad range of missions and mandates—from improving women’s health to solving the climate crisis to helping military families, incarcerated people, and teachers.
Read more
People from around the world booked 61,000 nights in Ukrainian cities via Airbnb in a social media campaign to get funds into besieged cities. The campaign saw $1.9 million raised for Ukrainians in just 48 hours. These bookings have amassed more than $15 million in aid, according to Airbnb. Out of the 61,000 stays booked at the start of March, 34,000 came from Americans, 3,000 from Canadians and 8,000 from the U.K. The company, which normally takes about 20% of each booking, waived its fees in Ukraine. Airbnb said they received more than $5.2 million in small-dollar, direct donations from a total of more than 59,000 individual donors across 92 countries.
Airbnb previously committed to setting up temporary housing for 100,000 Ukrainian refugees across Europe and North America. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky wrote “We need help to meet this goal. The greatest need we have is for more people who can offer their homes in nearby countries, including Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania.” Airbnb hosts that want to help need only register on the Airbnb.org Help Ukraine page. Within one day of the announcement, Airbnb hosts had answered this generosity with their own. More than 29,000 individuals have signed up to open their Airbnb-listed properties to Ukrainians, including 14,000 across Europe and 4,000 in the U.S.
The Utah Jazz Foundation is also partnering with Airbnb.org to provide more than 32,200 nights of temporary housing to refugees fleeing Ukraine, a number representing exactly 200% of the capacity of their Vivint Arena home stadium. Airbnb said they have contacted leaders in 14 European countries offering to place refugees in Airbnb properties. They are working closely with governments to best support the refugee housing needs in each country, including by providing longer-term stays. The United Nations reported that over 2 million Ukrainians, about 4% of Ukraine’s population, have fled to neighboring countries, more than 1 million of them to Poland. According to UNICEF, at least half of the 2 million refugees are children.
Celebrities around the world have also responded to the need for aid to refugees. Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher raised over $30 million and Ellen DeGeneres pledged to match $10 million in donations.
Harry Potter author J.K Rowling pledged to match up to $1.3 million in donations. Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively also pledged to match $1 million in donations. Bethenny Frankel’s disaster relief organization, BStrong, has raised more than $5 million in relocation aid, in addition to the $10 million the organization already pledged to support Ukraine.
South Korean actress Lee Young-ae made an $80,000 donation, Leonardo DiCaprio donated $10 million, singer-songwriter The Weeknd donated $500,000 and committed another $500,000 from his upcoming tour, David and Victoria Beckham donated $1 million and model Gigi Hadid pledged to donate her earnings from participating in Fall 2022 Fashion Week shows this month to support humanitarian relief efforts.
Read more
Former mayoral candidate and Chicago businessman Willie Wilson donated $200,000 in free gas across the city, causing a massive gridlock in the city. Every vehicle at participating gas stations received $50 until all the money was exhausted. Wilson is donating another $1 million in free gas this week.
Fifty gas stations across the city will participate in the free gas giveaway. Each station is also agreeing to lower their gasoline prices during the event to allow more families to benefit from Wilson’s generosity. The gas will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 7am Thursday
Wilson said “The need among the community is so great, soaring gas prices have caused a hardship for too many of our citizens. I am confident that with God’s help and wisdom we will get through these tough times together. This is our second gas giveaway in one week. The need is great, I want to help. If I can help somebody as I pass along this way, then my living is not in vain.”
Wilson, was one of the first African Americans to own McDonald’s franchises in Chicago back in the 1970s. He sold all of his restaurants in the 1980s and is president and CEO of Omar Medical Supplies, one of America’s largest distributors of disposable products for use in medical, industrial and foodservice areas.
He is no stranger to making headlines for his philanthropy. In 2018, he handed out checks for $100,000 to homeowners in danger of losing their homes. People lined up at the Cook County Building for checks from the Dr. Willie Wilson Foundation, a nonprofit organization. He also handed out envelopes of cash at a Southside church totaling $200,000.
In 2020, he donated 1 million face masks to hospitals across all 50 wards of Chicago and another 1000 masks to Chicago fire and police departments. Through his foundation, he also sent $100 to 10,000 people through Venmo and Paypal. Homeless people, senior citizens, and those who lost their job due to the pandemic just had to apply for the support.
Read more
