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Another lap around the sun

“The secret of change is to focus all of  your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

Socrates

Yesterday I celebrated another lap around the sun, as with any moment in life, at least at this stage, comes reflection.    The past three weeks we have celebrated one son’s college graduation, another son’s high school graduation, a funeral celebration of life and now another birthday. It has been a time of huge joy, celebration, change, and loss all rolled into three crazy weeks. More than anything it is a reflection of what life is all about. The ups, the downs, the roadblocks and embracing the joy while enjoying the journey.

Like all good journeys, there have to be a few bumps in the road. Those bumps ultimately define us, shape us and redirect our paths. A few weeks back I wrote about my roadblock and setback with the trolling photo attorney. Well, I am happy to report that he went away with great legal counsel and a huge groundswell of support from so so many of you, so thank you. Crisis averted, lessons learned and so many friends that rallied around that I somehow knew that everything would be ok and it was. The lesson learned was that no matter how big that roadblock may appear, with people you love around you-you can get through anything.

I guess that is the gift of getting older, you begin to see the lessons, the connections and the stories that each new direction presents along the path. There is a great quote I came across from R.M.Drake that says, “In the end, she became more than what she expected. She became the journey, and like all journeys, she did not end, she just simply changed directions and kept going.” 

So, as this new year starts today it is another opportunity to be grateful and to keep going. I am going to begin to write the book I have said I would write, continue to challenge myself to grow and to learn from the incredible people I bring to you each week.

Savor the joy, the moments with friends, family, children and know how blessed I am to have the gift of another birthday and another chance to keep trying to get it right.

Charity Matters

 

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Shields for Families

A few weeks ago I attended an incredible event at the Hilton Foundation that I wrote about. One of the women who spoke at the event was named Danielle Lowe and at lunchtime, I approached her and told her how impressed I was with the work she was doing with her nonprofit Shields for Families. I told her that I would love to learn more about the organization and asked if she by chance knew the founder. Danielle got a huge smile on her face and said, “Why yes I do, it happens to be my mother, Kathryn Icenhower.” A few weeks later the three of us, Danielle and her mother Kathryn and I had a fantastic conversation about the truly unbelievable work that Shields for Families is doing to serve South Central Los Angeles and thousands of families dealing with a full spectrum of needs like shelter, housing, transportation,  substance abuse treatment, education, homelessness and breaking the cycle of poverty. This amazing mother and daughter team is a perfect example of what is right in our world.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Shields for Families does?

Kathryn Icenhower: We attempt to provide families everything they need to be successful in life with whatever the dreams are that they set for themselves and not make that hard, by providing a full range of services. It always frustrated me when I was a social worker that families don’t come with one problem and our social services have always been set up in silos that make it challenging to get help. I don’t feel that getting help should be that hard. We tried to set up an organization where families can get whatever they need. We are all about believing, building and becoming.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start  Shields for Families?

Kathyrn Icenhower: To be honest, I got really mad. I was working for the Los Angeles County and I was in charge of programs, planning, and development. We had a massive drug epidemic and in 1987  The Martin Luther King/Drew Medical Center alone delivered 1,200 neo-natal infants that were exposed prenatally to drugs. Children were being ripped from their families and in most cases being placed far away. Our models for delivering treatment for substance abuse were not effective. So, I developed a model where women could bring their children with them to treatment every day and we had no funding. I met with the Assistant Director of the Alcohol and Drug program for the state to present my idea. At the time there was nothing like this in the country and she literally laughed me out of her office.

What I didn’t realize at the time, is that there were two doctors were presenting a similar idea at the state level about the medical ramifications of these children being born with drugs in their systems. The state agreed with the doctors and went back to the same woman, who had laughed at me. She called showed them my plan and it became the pilot program for the State of California. That was 1990 and the first program called Genisis began with $350,000. Norma Mtume and Xylina Bean helped make this happen and the three of us are still together.

Charity Matters: How did you start?

Kathyrn Icenhower: We listened to families to see what they needed and then I used my skill as a grant writer and we began asking for funding to meet those needs. We were able to get funding to build our treatment program. Then the county wanted to keep some of these programs local so that is when we expanded into child welfare and mental health. Danielle was five when we started Shields.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Danielle Brunn Lowe: I think one of the biggest challenges that Shields is very innovative with solutions and as a result, we are often waiting on funders or the community to catch up with us. We are very selective with our funding and we ensure that our funders mission needs to match ours. Sometimes we end up with a gap in services and end up doing a lot of pro bono work. 

Kathyrn Icenhower: Families don’t have problems in a vacuum and you can’t address them in that way. We have outcomes to prove that our programs are effective. We partner with ten different agencies that bring a wealth of information to us. In the past couple of years, there has been such a focus on accountability. While accountability is important, the amount of time for measurement audits and scrutiny is sometimes overwhelming. We have fifty grants from the federal government, the state, and private funders.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Danielle Brunn Lowe: I was raised that everyone on this earth was put here for a purpose. I have been blessed to find mine. That is what keeps me going. To see people achieve things they never thought they could never do is the best and a blessing. This is my purpose and I was blessed enough to be I born with this work watching my mom. I was there as a child as she did this. Helping to give people the skills they need to advocate for themselves really keeps me going.

Kathyrn Icenhower: My spirituality lead me here. I had a calling. I’m not going to lie, this is hard work. I would not have survived this had I not stayed in touch with the people I help for the past twenty-nine years. I am grounded by the people we serve. I can’t take any credit, I just listened. That is something everyone needs to do. I love attending all the events we do to remind me why I do this work every day. It is all necessary. These families remind me why I do what I do.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Danielle Brunn Lowe: The outside world defines family success differently. When I watch a family go through a treatment program and reach their goals. When our families become independent. When I see one of our teens help another through coping skills that we have taught them, I know we have made an impact. I tell all my families the line from Nanny McPhee, ” When you don’t want me but need me, I’ll be there. Go fly and call me to tell me how you are flying.”

Kathyrn Icenhower: I know we have made a difference when kids graduate from college. When mothers in treatment get their masters degrees. What we are able to accomplish changes, whole families. “We” made a difference when someone can have their children back. There are so many minute things. Seeing families being successful in accomplishing their goals and that they are caring for one another. We have been able to change the trajectories of entire families.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about your impact?

Danielle Brunn Lowe: With our charter schools these are students who have been kicked out of a traditional school for a host of reasons. On average our students are about a year behind when they start with us.  Forty percent are homeless youth, involved with child welfare or probation and we have a ninety percent graduation rate with 85% transferring to a four-year college.

Book of Joy

Kathryn Icenhower: We serve over 10,000 families a year with 350 full-time staff and a thirty million dollar budget. Historically, our models have been very successful, our treatment centers have an eighty percent success rate versus the national average of twenty-five percent for long term treatment. We have an upfront assessment plan when a child needs to be removed from the home due to drugs or abuse, we assist the family with services for treatment and do whatever we can to help keep the child at home or make sure the parents voluntarily let the child go while they get help. Within a year and a half of implementing the program, we have reduced the out of home removal by 62% and are now training other agencies on how to use our skills.   We saved the County of Los Angeles over one hundred million dollars and that program became embedded in multiple other programs.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Danielle Brunn Lowe: I have learned to always speak for what is right. My mom showed me how.

Kathyrn Icenhower: When Danielle was little we were at a meeting and she spoke up for something that made her upset. She has always done that which makes me proud. This journey has made me stronger. The challenges may try to knock you down but I’ve had to learn to trust myself and to maintain my faith, that it is all going to be ok.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Danielle Brunn Lowe: I have learned the ability to be humble and vulnerable. Sometimes we all take for granted everything that we have.  I am always humbled by what I learn about resiliency and faith from those we serve. To watch them working towards those goals that every human being deserves. Being open is a constant reminder of what is actually meaningful in this lifetime. This work is a constant reality check that it is not the money that gives you status but what you have to offer from within.

Kathyrn Icenhower: I have learned to always have faith. I must always do what I believe is correct no matter how difficult that path may seem and have faith that will carry me through. 

Charity Matters

 

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The Unity of Adversity

This week’s fire at Notre Dame affected me more than I realized and while I was planning on sharing a different story, I found myself needing to shift gears. Over the years I have written many posts about loss and the multitude of ways in which it affects our lives.  Loss and adversity do many things, it breaks our hearts, it makes us sad and it unites us in a shared experience and brings us together in community. The fire at Notre Dame did all of that; a huge loss for the world and in the ruins we see the beauty of people coming together in shared grief.

For many of us, when we think about Notre Dame we think of our first trip to Paris and the wonder of it all. For me the first time I saw the beautiful landmark was a trip with my mom after I graduated from college.  So many of us posted our pictures standing in front of the iconic cathedral over the decades on social media in the aftermath of the fire. A shared experience that hundreds of thousands of us experience each year. We came together via Instagram, Facebook, our modern-day community to mourn and to unite with those images.

Notre Dame has always been about bringing people together, imagine the community that built that iconic structure over 850 years ago? For over two centuries families came together in to build the cathedral. Hauling one thousand three hundred oak trees to create the rafters took an enormous effort and to imagine what it took to simply move one oak tree in the year 1163. The journey of creating, the struggles to build, the families that sacrificed to erect the cathedral are as monumental as the scale of the flying buttresses. The awe and wonder that was built to show the human spirit, imagination, beauty and the community of faith are what continues to draw us to the iconic structure over and over.

Notre Dame was not only a community in its creation but once finished it was the center of Paris; a place of worship, faith, a place to celebrate births, weddings and deaths. Hundreds of thousands of families had the most important moments of their lives within those walls for over eight hundred years. People coming together to support one another in times of joy and sadness. It is what we do as humans and sometimes it is something we forget about in our daily lives as we look at screens, smartphones and not the people sitting next to us.

The fire this week is a reminder that in loss we come together to support one another, to share memories, to console each other and to look ahead at how we can rebuild in the face of adversity. How do we unite to re-create beauty, to dream, to build, to worship, to love, to celebrate and to live?

 

Notre Dame is symbolic of our lives and a precious reminder of the power and importance of coming together in good times and in bad.

Charity Matters

 

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Family Promise

Every one of us has passed a homeless person on the street but not every one of us stops, especially when we are in a hurry. That is exactly what happened to Karen Olson in 1985 on her way to a meeting in New York City.  On an impulse Karen not only stopped but she bought the woman, named Millie a sandwich. Karen began speaking with Millie, who explained to her that homelessness brought about profound feelings of disconnection from society and a lack of self-worth.  That moment changed everything for Karen Olson and from that meeting, she began to look at a new way to try to help connect those in need to those who wanted to help. Little did she know that this encounter would become the birth of Family Promise.

Earlier this week I had a fantastic conversation with Claas Ehlers who is now the Executive Director of Family Promise, as Karen stepped down a few years ago after almost twenty-eight years at the helm. Claas not only has a personal connection to this mission but has been working at Family Promise since 2002. I can’t wait to share the rest of this story and enlightening conversation with you. It is remarkable what one sandwich did and continues to do for thousands of homeless families across our country.

Charity Matters:  Tell me a little about what happened to Karen after the sandwich and The beginning of Family Promise?

Claas Ehlers: So, in 1985 the number one reason the State of New Jersey was placing children in foster care was not because of abuse or neglect but because their mothers had become homeless. At that point, homelessness was a relatively new phenomenon and family homelessness was totally unheard of concept. In 1985, you thought it was an urban problem of single homeless people but not of families out in the suburbs. Karen had worked in the city with individual homeless people but when she discovered the statistic about children and families she got motivated to do something.

Karen decided to arrange a conference and was smart enough to recognize that the faith community would be engaged in this. There were over 80 congregations represented by over 200 people at that initial meeting, in late 1985. She simply asked the question, “What can we do about this problem of family homelessness?”

Congregations said we want to do something more meaningful than writing checks. The initial thought was to get a church or synagogue building and turn it into a shelter. Then these congregations realized that they had space and they had volunteers who already wanted to help. The YMCA offered space, Autoland gave them a discounted passenger van so they could offer transportation. So out of that meeting in an ad hoc way the program started. 

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Family Promise does?

Claas Ehlers: We are a national organization, somewhat like the headquarters of McDonald’s but we don’t actually make hamburgers here. What we do facilitate is to empower families towards success and we mobilize volunteers and we cross those over so that each one is stronger as a result of the other. When we look at empowering families, we are looking specifically at families that are experiencing homelessness, which is not a sharp line….there is a lot of blurring, people that are at risk of homelessness, people who are nearly homeless and people that are experiencing homelessness.

Overall what Family Promise does is provide more than just shelter for families but a holistic solution that includes the prevention of family homelessness and the stabilization of families at risk. What we do here is to try to maximize our affiliates so that they can serve as many families as possible and engage the community in ways that bring in many more resources than one might expect to address the issue.

Charity Matters: How did Family Promise Grow so quickly?

Claas Ehlers: After that first meeting it took about a year and a half before we were operational and in October 1986 we officially started serving families. Neighboring communities began to see what we were doing and the program took off organically and kept spreading to Philadelphia and Ohio.  In addition to shelter, meals, housing and job support our affiliates began developing programs for transitional housing, childcare, and homeless prevention. In 1988, Karen said,” we should make this a national organization.”  As a result, we renamed our national organization Family Promise. Karen had a vision from the beginning. We are so lucky to have incredible engagement with communities across the country who are innovative with how to solve their communities problems. 

Charity Matters: What are the biggest challenges in your work?

Claas Ehlers: One big challenge is that people do not understand family homelessness. People view homelessness as chronic singles homelessness and the bigger issue is housing and stability. Another challenge is to ensure that we have resources to meet our mission and overall awareness of our work. We recently had a piece on the Today Show that did a wonderful job telling the story of our work in a very compelling way. (click above to watch)

The terrain is changing too with artificial intelligence and how is that going to affect jobs and homelessness?  We are thinking about these things. We do have a goal to increase the number of people we serve but at the same time, we think about how are we going to push the bell curve to the right. We are always trying to find out ways to help our affiliates do their jobs better.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Claas Ehlers: Certainly there are always lots of challenges and obstacles but I wake up every morning feeling like I am the luckiest person in the world. I have the most amazing team, they are mission-driven, talented, and work well together. I go out into the field and I work with a group of volunteers who are so committed to having an impact on homelessness in their community and that is just SO inspiring.

The other side of that is the alumni of our program, the people who serve on our guest advisory council. I work with these people who have faced adversity they have been homeless and come through our program and are now committed to helping others be successful by paying it forward. They are working, have families and are dedicating all their time and energy to help others in any way they can. I have my own personal stories and have been in Foster Care but that is nothing compared to what a lot of these stories are. These are people that say that this community supported me and now I am going to give back.

When I see the children who leave our programs and see the future they have that they didn’t have before that keeps me going.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Claas Ehlers: It is a tough question for me to answer because I am self-critical. I always see what I haven’t done. There are so many moments. Recently, when the Today Show piece came out, I emailed it to a number of our partners to share. The responses I received from current partners and potential partners saying, ” I am just so proud that our firm partners with Family Promise.” Those moments remind me of the work we are doing.

This morning, I was talking about the weekend with our relatively new Chief Operating Officer, she told me that she took her children to volunteer for Family Promise. She told me she couldn’t believe that her 14-year-old son was so compassionate working with a 4-year-old at one of their shelters. There are so many moments that show me the impact. Every statistic is a human, a person whose life we touched. There is magic everywhere. There is just magic.

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had? What has your impact at Family Promise been?

Claas Ehlers: We always really try to look at how we are successful and how that can drive innovation. First of all, we serve over 90,000 people a year in all different ways and 60% of those people are children. What is really important is that we have our core Shelter Program that is about 18% of the people that we serve. In that program, 88% of those people move into long term housing (traditional, permanent, or shared) after 57 days. We are not about getting people into housing, we are about getting them into housing they can sustain. That is critical that we get them into sustainable housing.

We have 200 affiliates (chapters around the country) that have over 1,700 distinct programs that address some element of prevention, shelter or stabilization that are run by 200,000 volunteers. We are launching a new program at our National Convention this week that trains volunteers to understand the grief and trauma that happens when you lose your home.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Claas Ehlers: I always had a connection with helping children who were under-resourced. My children have been raised with this work. Now that they are grown, I get to watch their service. All of my three children serve and this work has helped define our values. We have always prioritized helping those that are not as fortunate as we are. If we can all just incrementally be better people each day then that is what really matters.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Claas Ehlers: What I have learned is that things are rivers and you have to understand that things are rivers. And that when you are at the river the water at the river is the way it is now but might not be the way it is next time. The water that you see at the river today will be entirely different than the water you see next month. It is higher or lower or not as clean. You have to realize that everything is fluid and that things are never the same at any one time. That every time something changes it is a new opportunity.

CHARITY MATTERS

 

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The Giving Tree

Over the years I’ve written a number of posts about helping the helpers, caring for the caregivers and self-care. The magical thing about all of these nonprofit founders is that their passion and purpose rules their lives. No matter how many people they help, there are always more who need them. These selfless heroes start an organization out of their core belief that their work and effort will ensure that the next human will not go through whatever tragic event they went through, cancer, rape, sex trafficking….and the list goes on. And they are right, their work does change the world but the other side of my amazing heroes is their selflessness often comes to the point of burnout. They give and give and give until there is nothing left.

My nonprofit founders remind me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Giving Tree. The tree gives shade to the child, it gives limbs to climb, it gives its fruit to sell, it gives itself for wood to build a home and ultimately it has nothing left to give. This is often the reality of the nonprofit founder, they give until they are empty. The needs of humanity are endless and can truly never be met and yet, they keep on giving and giving.

I understand this because I suffer from the same disease. I am not Mother Teresa nor as saintly as those I love to interview but I confess that I am hardwired for burnout. Like an energizer bunny, I go full throttle into projects, meetings, running a nonprofit, writing these posts and trying to connect people to causes. I love my work, am passionate about making a difference with my life and am full of gratitude. The downside to these gifts is the burnout. The tank that is suddenly on empty and is so low on gas you are pretty sure that even if you can find a gas station, you will run out of gas long before that tank can possibly be refueled again.

So how do we help the helpers? How do we care for the caregivers or even more importantly care for ourselves more, regardless of our careers? I  think the challenge is that the answer is exactly that, to care for ourselves, to slow down, to walk to win the race and not run. Even typing those words feels like its opposite day. How can we get everything done if we move slowly, thoughtfully and walk through life?

The reality of this is finally sinking in for me and I am not alone. According to a recent article in Thrive Global, author Stephanie Fairyington states that “two-thirds of Americans are suffering from burnout.”  The pace of life can often times feel unsustainable. The race ahead appears too big and too long to run. As I look ahead to the future and all that I hope to accomplish, I see that the only hope to keep giving is to start here first. To slowly fill up the tank and not feel guilty while doing so. To set realistic goals and expectations about what can actually be accomplished in a day, a week, a month. The mindset and commitment to that alone is the first step.

 

Next, the action plan towards self-care. First, sleep and turning off the devices, with clear time limits set. Second, fuel type, some people put 87 octanes in their cars and some like to put 91 and I usually fall in the middle at 89, my diet is exactly the same. I put some great fuel in my body and some not so great fuel, this needs to change. I need to upgrade on the fuel choices more regularly. After those basic maintenance steps, it is carving out time for myself. Giving myself the gifts that fuel me whether a run, coffee with a friend, writing, and the list goes on.

While it feels backward being selfish will only fuel my ability to be selfless. The more I can care for myself, the more energy I will have to care for others and the causes I am passionate about. So as we are entering a time of spring and renewal, I am committing to myself (you are my witnesses) that this Giving Tree will keep her limbs, branches, and fruit so that she can continue to give year after year.

Charity Matters.

 

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Changing children’s lives:Centinela Youth Services

“I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” 

Abraham Lincoln

Office Benny Abucejo and Executive Director Jessica Ellis

In my crazy life one thing always seems to lead to another. This past Christmas I met the amazing Jessica Ellis at a holiday work party. Jessica is the Executive Director for an incredible nonprofit called Centinela Youth Services. Their mission is to reduce the number of youth attached to the criminal justice system. After last week’s conversation with the remarkable Jill Weiss from UpRising Yoga, I thought the time to circle back with Jessica was now. There is so much work happening in the juvenile justice system and I wanted to know more.

It truly never ceases to amaze me how a  simple idea can impact generations of lives in such a positive way. That is exactly what happened in the 1970s when a few Inglewood police officers recognized that kids who were doing stupid things didn’t really need jail, they needed guidance. More than that, these juveniles’ needed to own their mistakes and face (literally eye to eye) the person that they had harmed.

Charity Matters:  Tell us a little about what Centinela Youth Services (CYS) does?

Jessica Ellis: Centinela Youth Services, or CYS as we call it, mission is to reduce the number of vulnerable high needs youth attached to the juvenile justice system in partnership with the Los Angels Police Department, seven other police departments, Inglewood and Compton School Districts, the Public Defender and the District Attorney. We work to keep kids out of the justice system and service the victims of crimes in the process in order to create a more human approach to healing.

When our kids and the victims of crime meet face to face they are put together with two trained community volunteers. We are healing the child and the victim and the community. Our volunteers are the true champions. The magic is bringing two people together towards resolution.

Charity Matters: Give us a little history of CYS?

Jessica Ellis: Between 1973 and 1975 there were a number of police officers in Inglewood, CA who thought that there were kids who really needed to be helped rather than arrested. A couple guys on the police force on their own started to connect these kids to after school programs or counseling rather than to jail. It ended up demonstrating that there was a need for this. It became more than they could do on top of their day job so the city of Inglewood along with five local cities ended up coming together to charter our nonprofit to divert students from arrest to counseling.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Jessica Ellis: The interesting thing for us right now is that there is a very unique window of opportunity that has been going on the past couple years for our kind of work in restorative justice. We have been doing diversion (from juvenile hall) since the 1970s and restorative justice since the early 90s and now it is sort of the new hip thing and all of the sudden there is political will for this work and a quite a bit of it.

We have been doing this work in actively transforming the juvenile justice system and our model has influenced others to replicate our program across the state and country. We started the first diversion program in LA County, so when a child is picked up the arrest is not recorded on their record if they complete the diversion program successfully that they have been assigned. While the replication is hugely exciting, we get pulled in as the experts to help replicate our work for this juvenile justice transformation. We don’t necessarily get funded to be the experts. So the challenge is to meet our core capacity  and help to  expand and replicate work. 

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Jessica Ellis: What I love most is that we transcend all criminal justice systems. We bring people face to face to resolve conflicts. We bring the child face to face with the victim of the crime and this two sided approach brings us back to our humanity. It is so much more rewarding. A lot of us have been impacted by both  sides of the justice system, I have close family members who have spent time in prison and I have a family members who was murdered. People that I love have hurt other people. We need to recognize both of those sides and that we can repair humanity, move forward, make people whole and not just give up and throw away people, especially kids.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Jessica Ellis: I know that we have made a difference when a child connects with the person that they have harmed.  A fifteen-year old boy vandalized a school really badly with graffiti everywhere. He really did a huge amount of damage. The principal was so angry he didn’t want to meet with him. The principal sat in the room with the images of the damage on his laptop fueling his anger. The boy walked into the room and the principal would not look up at him. 

When the mediator asked the boy why he wrote bad things about his school and his teachers. The boy didn’t answer. The boy’s mother said to her son, “Tell the principal about what your teachers did.” The young boy tells his principal that when his father went to jail, his teachers were kind and that they bought him clothes and food. The principal now looked at this boy now with humanity. He said, “Your dad went to jail?” The boy replied, “Yes, and I was angry.” The two began talking about art because some of the “damage” was very artistic. The principal loved art as well. He ultimately mentored the boy and enrolled him in a special art program and had him draw a mural at the school

Resolution like this happens everyday. This is very typical of our work. One third of kids are dealing with some sort of mental illness in their homes, one third deal with trauma…we see so many kids do dumb things on the heals of a parent’s death. Kids act out so often due to trauma . Our system is set up to feed that anger and bipolarity, the prison system does not get to the underlying issues where we do. 

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had? What has your impact been? Number  of people impacted, funds raised?

Jessica Ellis: Our greatest impact is that we have created a space where kindness and compassion can grow for over 1,000 children a year. We believe that our kids deserve quality. Our crime victims have a 98% satisfaction rate with our work, the kids rate our program fair and equitable 96% of the time.  Our recidivism rate (or the rate with which students are rearrested) is significantly reduced. If you lock kids up they have a higher chance of going back to jail by two-thirds. If you don’t lock them up but put them on probation there is a 23% to 33% of recidivism. Our kids a have less than 8%rate.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience?

Jessica Ellis: It is so easy as humans to want to fix or to blame and to not look at ourselves. If we are helping other people resolving conflicts at work, how can we do this in our own families and lives? Looking at our own lives reminds us how hard this work is and how important.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Jessica Ellis: Our work is having such a huge impact here in California. Nationally there is so much discord. All politics aside, the amount of change we are making here in California that moves the criminal justice system to be better for kids, just gives me so much hope. We are seeing law enforcement, District Attorneys, community advocates, criminal justice reformers all coming together to make this change. 

Having hope is a good thing to have.

Charity Matters.

 

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Uprising Yoga

 

While I am still compiling my final New Years resolutions one of them is definitely to do more yoga. In a recent yoga class I was talking to my instructor about her work volunteering in juvenile hall teaching trauma informed yoga with an organization called Uprising Yoga. My yoga teacher and friend introduced me to the amazing and beyond uplifting founder, Jill Ippolito Weiss. Jill has taken her gifts to bring yoga to both underserved communities and to the incarcerated kids at juvenile hall.

I came away from our conversation inspired, invigorated and moved.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Uprising Yoga Does?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: The mission of Uprising Yoga is to bring trauma informed yoga to the incarcerated and to underserved communities. Trauma informed yoga helps people understand the impact of trauma on your entire mind and body, it helps understand the imprint left on the brain.

We have now had such growth that we are training the trainers to bring our program to social workers, probation staff and more teacher awareness. We are building sustainable business models where others can take our curriculum into their communities and use to provide trauma informed yoga.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Uprising Yoga?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: In the summer of 2010, I was dating a man named Nick, now my husband and he came home from work and was shaking and upset. I asked what was wrong and he explained that he had just toured a youth prison camp. He described what he saw and I asked him, “Can I teach yoga there?” 

I was working at a yoga college with my friend Mary and she was trying to put a group of instructors together to teach in juvenile hall already. Between the two of us we tried to find a way to actually get into juvenile hall. Getting clearance to work in prisons is a big deal. For months we tried to offer our services and got nowhere. Then in 2011, Nick and I were at a Christmas party and I was talking to a man who worked in the prison system and told him what I wanted to do. He and his colleagues all reached out and said, “When do you want to start?” So Mary, Nick and I began teaching trauma informed yoga on Tuesday nights to juvenile hall’s most vulnerable kids, the foster care sexually trafficked minors. 

Slowly, the classes began to grow and grow. We received a grant to determine how yoga was helping these kids. A friend said, “Have you thought about starting a nonprofit?”  So in 2012 we started officially. We were having a fund raiser and I called my mom to ask if she would donate. She asked what for and I told her to help the kids in juvenile hall. My mom said,” Jill, I picked you up there when you were a kid.” I was speechless because I honestly did not remember that I had been in the juvenile hall that I was now teaching in. Because I didn’t remember I began to study trauma and how it affects your brain and how we heal from trauma. That is how I connected trauma and yoga. 

I knew that I had gotten into trouble and I knew that recovery and yoga had saved my life. I hadn’t really been able to figure out why I was drawn to incarcerated youth until that moment. What pulled at my heart is that my mom came for me and no one is coming for these kids.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: I had no idea when I started how this was going to grow and expand. Our biggest challenge is that there is not enough man power and so much need that we simply can not meet.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: Connection and the stories I hear about what we do works. The thank you notes that I receive from students that say, “Thank you for letting my body detox.” It makes me high on the universe . My work matters. The ultimate gift is hearing that how you changed someone’s life for the better.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: There are so many ways but when we receive a letter, an email or a picture from juvenile hall saying, “Thank you for caring about us.” I know we are teaching life skills and that what we teach lasts a lifetime. I was recently asked to participate in a book about best practices for yoga in the criminal justice system. When people recognize me for my work that is touching.

We recently had a hostage/shooter situation at our local Trader Joes a block from our home.  The day after the situation I called volunteered my services to teach trauma informed yoga to the hostages.  I felt so helpless and thought what can one person do to offer their gifts and talents?  There was so much pain and trauma in my own neighborhood. So now we come together once a week and the trauma informed yoga has brought us all together. The yoga is healing these victims of violence and has given me an opportunity to use my gifts to let others know I care. These hostages have told me how this class has healed them.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about your impact? The successes you have had?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: Our impact is on many levels. It can be as small as what we do for one person with our one on one work or large when we do large events. We know that violence goes down significantly after we work in the prisons. Today is our work is recognized nationally and internationally. Our Uprising Yoga curriculum is spreading across the country because it works and people are replicating our model. That is when you know your work has impact.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned since beginning Uprising Yoga and how has this experience changed you?

Jill Ippolito Weiss: I have learned that people are good and want to keep doing good.  Once the nonprofit got started, people who cared came out of the woodwork to volunteer, to help, to donate and that literally shifted my entire perception of humanity. I didn’t know people had SO much good in them. I continue to believe that.

This experience made me go from suspicion and confusion into understanding why I went through my pain and how my healing process became available to others. I understood what my own healing journey meant. The yoga just didn’t heal me but it also healed everyone around me. My husband Nick has been a part of this entire journey and I feel that our love is shared out into a community.

Charity Matters

 

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Tracy’s Dogs

“A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself.”

Josh Billings

There are 1.7 million nonprofit organizations in the United States and not enough days in the year to cover them all. Years ago when I began telling the stories of these incredible humans making our world better, I decided I would only tell stories of people helping people. As much as I love green causes and animals I needed to create some perimeters. When a friend of mine at HooplaHa reached out to tell me about Tracy and the work she and her husband Scott are doing to rescue dogs in kill shelters, I knew these were very special humans. When you see what Tracy and Scott Whyatt do, you will realize that this is people helping people and thousands of dogs in the process.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about what Tracy’s Dogs Does?

Tracy Voss Whyatt: We initially thought we were going to be an online platform to connect people with dogs that we rescued from kill shelters that were going to be euthanized. We never thought we were going to have five acres, care for up to 100 dogs a day, with some in our homes or have a nonprofit. 

Scott Whyatt: We never expected to start a nonprofit and really had no idea what had started out as Tracy’s passion for these dogs would become what it is today. We really intended to be an online virtual rescue and then Tracy had another idea…

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Tracy’s Dogs?

Tracy Voss Whyatt: In 2010, I was a single mom of three girls and had been working in human pharmaceutical sales for years and was laid off. I really depressed, so I started going down to the local animal shelter taking pictures and videos of these dogs that were on the euthanasia list and sending them to local animal rescue groups. What I didn’t realize that the dogs I was sending photos of were getting adopted and the images were going viral. Four to six weeks later my company hired me back but I just continued. On my lunch hour, after work going to these kennels. Scott and I started fostering some dogs and it just kept growing.

Scott Whyatt: I had just moved to Texas and had come from a media back round having worked in branding, marketing and television. I told Tracy, I think I have an idea to help you with your online presence we can create a platform to help shelters across the country promote the dogs that are not getting adopted. We are going to name this Tracy’s Dogs. The following year, in 2011 we became an official nonprofit.

Tracy Voss Whyatt: The plans changed when a local woman heard what we were doing and believed in our work. She offered to lease us her 5 acre property with buildings on it for $1.00 a year. So we started housing dogs there. It has grown. I am still in pharmaceutical sales but now I am work in animal health.

Scott Whyatt: Early on we decided that I would get out of what I was doing to run Tracy’s Dogs and Tracy could keep her corporate job. I came on board full time to take care of 85-105 dogs a day for 16 hours a day. The payoff for this work is huge.

Charity Matters: What are your biggest challenges?

Tracy Voss Whyatt: I think our biggest challenge is not having enough space for all the dogs I want to save. I could save so many more dogs if I had a place to put them. There is an endless supply of dogs, but there is nothing worse than walking into a kill facilities seeing a beautiful dog and knowing I can’t take him because there is no space left. The other challenge is finding people who love our dogs and want to do this for the right reason. You have to love dogs to your core.

Scott Whyatt: My biggest challenge is that Tracy’s heart is so big that it is hard to keep the operation, the engine and everything else running at the level of her passion. She is truly the heart of this. I am simply the steering wheel and and the breaks. I am just trying to keep up with her. We have fifty-eight volunteers across the country who handle the adoption process and seven on staff full time who care for the animals. These dogs bring out a level of emotion in all of our staff and volunteers and sometimes that is more challenging than managing all of our dogs.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Scott Whyatt: Honestly, I get so much from the transport day. The day we actually get to connect the dog and their new forever family. I have the honor of shaking every person’s hand. There is something indescribable in that moment. Those dogs mean so much more than an adoption. It is remarkable every time.  It is a privilege and an event to connect these dogs and their new families. I worked for free until 2017. I get so much out of meeting these people. We work all month finding the dogs, connecting them to the right family, caring for them and then once a month we get this amazing payoff. I will give up everything but that moment, there is nothing better.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Scott Whyatt: We are doing so much than caring for, rescuing and saving dogs. We are filling needs for people that we often do not even know about. Last year, I was in New Jersey handing off a Boston Terrier to a man in his sixties. He began to cry when he got his dog. He could not contain his emotion. His previous Boston Terrier had died, he had lost his wife and this dog filled an enormous void in his life. 

Tracy Voss Whyatt: We get letters and emails all the time from families. One of them was from a family who contacted us and sent a picture of their daughters favorite stuffed animal. Their daughter was having open heart surgery. We found a puppy that literally looked exactly like this stuffed animal. We heard that the little girl loved her dog and pulled through surgery. A year later we heard from the family that the little girl now had leukemia and during her treatments she would show the doctors photos of her dog at home and say, ” I can’t stay here overnight because I need to get home and take care of my dog.” They are literally best friends. We realize that these dogs have a purpose and that these connections are not by chance.

Charity Matters: Tell us a little about your impact? The successes you have had?

Scott Whyatt: What I’ve learned is that our successes is really about the service we do for people. We have rescued 4800 dogs but more than that we do it right. We want to know how connected our customers are to us and their dog. Forty percent of people end up with a different dog than they initially wanted because our screeners have matched them. Less than 1.8% of the dogs don’t work out and we take them back. We have created a family across 44 states of 4800 people. This isn’t a transaction, it is so much more. We mean something to these families. This is bigger than just dogs.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned since beginning Tracy’s Dogs?

Scott Whyatt: I used to play college football and I get more out of this work than playing football in front of 40,000 people. I had a big life but you realize the focus on yourself doesn’t matter. It is not about you but about what you are doing and who you are doing it for that matters. I work for rewards that matter. It is a privilege to connect these dogs and families.

Tracy Voss Whyatt: I’ve spent many years angry towards people for the abuse and neglect I see everyday towards defenseless animals.   What the dogs have taught me after years of trying is that love and forgiveness  is much stronger than anger or hate.

Dogs have the ability to see only the good in people and are very forgiving creatures.  Qualities I admire and strive to live by every day. Making the world a better place isn’t going to happen with anger or hate.   We have a much better chance of making the world a better place with love and forgiveness.

Charity Matters: How has this journey changed you?

Scott Whyatt: I am very different. I am far more driven than I was eight years ago. We pull 700 dogs a year and that is 700 lives. I know in the grand scheme of things that number is small but it is 700 lives that I get to touch. I know that this life we save is going to make another life happy. I feel the responsibility to our volunteers, our dogs and our families to all be a part of something so much bigger than we are.

Tracy Voss Whyatt: Tracy’s Dogs has made me a better person and more understanding towards people.    My passion is helping animals but through this work, I’ve developed a better understanding and love for people thanks to the dogs.I finally realized after 8 years in rescue, love and forgiveness can change the world.    There are more good people out there than bad.

We are changing the lives of dogs and people one person at a time.

Charity Matters

 

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Charity Matters Inspiration

New Year

” And now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that never were.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Happy New Year! I am pretty sure that this year is my year. I know I’ve said this before but I feel that it is my time. Our youngest son is graduating from high school, our second son graduating from college. One of my dearest friends is moving away, the house will be empty and the shift that is an ending and a new beginning has already begun. You feel these things internally and know that loss, growth and change are inevitable.  We must shed on old skin to grow a new one. This year I am not afraid but ready.

I am putting myself out there, open to what the universe presents and willing to be vulnerable. These are not easy things to do but signs of readiness to fly. I have spent the last week in Mexico, a country I have refused to visit since my mother died there 16 years ago. I’m not sure what I was afraid of but it was the perfect way to end 2018 and look ahead to the journey that lies ahead in 2019 by embracing a fear and taking it head on.

Life is too short to hold yourself back. We all have such a short precious time on this earth, so how can we use our time to the fullest? This is the question I will be asking myself everyday and throughout the year. I am still pulling my full list of resolutions together but know that more than anything I am immensely grateful for love, health, family, faith and friends. The best way I know to show that gratitude is to channel that abundance and love into service. So this year, I commit to gratitude, to giving of myself, to being brave and to spreading the love….which is just another word for charity.

Wishing you a year full of love in 2019.

Happy New Year!

Charity Matters.

 

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Gifts that give

“The greatest gifts are not wrapped in paper but in love.”

Finding the perfect gift is never an easy task. So many of the people in my life really need for so little and so many need so much, so why not combine the two this holiday season? There are a variety of great ways to give back and give, it is like having two gifts in one….or a gift with purchase.  After moving a few years ago, it became clear that we did not need any more stuff and it seemed that many of my friends and family do not need it either. So how are we supposed to show the ones that we love with a meaningful gift? In my search I came across some thoughtful gift ideas that give back worth sharing.

Luxanthropy

Founder Jennifer Hillman combined her passion for philanthropy and high end luxury goods in one brilliant online stop to shop. LuxAnthropy is a place where you can find a fabulous bag, dress, accessory or the perfect gift and a percentage of every sale goes to a host of amazing nonprofit partners. On top of that, LuxAnthropy even gives an additional percentage to each cause. This is a win-win! Beautiful gifts that give back!

The Giving Keys

The Giving Keys began in 2008 when founder, Caitlyn Crosby, stayed in a hotel room that used real keys. The keys reminded her of each person’s uniqueness and she began having keys made with inspirational words such as DREAM, CREATE, or INSPIRE engraved on keys. Caitlyn began giving the keys away to anyone who needed to be inspired. The purpose is to embrace your key and your word and then to pay it forward and give your key to someone who needs that message. The Giving Keys is not a nonprofit but every product purchased supports job creation for individuals transitioning out of homelessness and to date The Giving Keys has provided over 146,318 hours of work and created over 70 jobs for those in need.

One Hope Wine

In 2007, Jake Kloberdanz  had an idea, 168 cases of wine and eight friends just out of college. No, it was not a party but the beginning of his company, OneHope that’s mission is to make the world a better place through every product they sell. OneHope‘s core product is wine but they have expanded their brand and their charitable donations along with it. Every product benefits a cause and to date OneHope has donated over one million meals to the cause Why Hunger, 65,000 diapers to help premature infants, planted 52,000 trees, provided clean drinking water and the list goes on.  OneHope has donated over $1.6 million dollars since its inception. Now that is a cause worth raising your glass for and a great gift that gives!

 

 GIFTS THAT BENEFIT ST. JUDE CHILDREN’S RESEARCH HOSPITAL

This year St. Jude’s has partnered with fantastic retailers such as William Sonoma, Home Goods,Brooks Brothers, Pottery Barn, Tumi Luggage, West Elm and Mark and Graham all with proceeds from certain items going to support cancer research and  the St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital where parents do not receive a bill for any of their child’s medical care. To support St. Jude’s and shop 

 PUBLIC SUPPLY COMPANY IN SUPPORT OF EDUCATION

The Public Supply Company makes beautiful suede,v elour and leather notebooks for the writer in your life. More than that their mission is to support creative work in our country’s public schools by channeling 25% of profits from every sale to a teacher in a high-need classroom who will use the money for a project that drives creativity. To find that thoughtful gift that gives back, visit Public-Supply Co. You will be happy you did!

GIVE LOTTO LOVE SCRATCH CARDS

This amazing organization has created their own lotto where everyone is a winner. Play LottoLove to win for someone in need. With the purchase of each scratch card, LottoLove donates to one of its nonprofit partners to support a different worthy cause.

For every card purchased LottoLove donates to their Non-profit partners to fulfill their social mission of helping people receive: clean water, solar light, nutritious meals or literacy tools. Each ‘Basic Needs’ card gives one of the following:
1 week of clean water
3 weeks of clean water
1 month of solar light
4 months of solar light
1 set of literacy tools
3 sets of literacy tools
To purchase these fantastic cards, which by the way make great stocking stuffers, check out Give Lotto Love 

GIFTS FOR GOOD

Lastly, there is a great website called Gifts for Good where if there wasn’t anything above that fit your holiday list that this is the place for you. Gifts for Good’s mission is to change the way the world gifts. According to their site U.S. corporations spend over $60 billion every year on corporate gifts, but donate less than a third of that to charitable causes. If every corporation purchased gifts that gave back―without spending any more money―we could redirect an extra $60 billion a year to addressing our world’s most pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.

To solve this Gifts for Good has an incredible catalog of gifts that all give back and just might be the final place to finish up your shopping.

Hoping that these suggestions are helpful in making this season of giving meaningful for all.

CHARITY MATTERS

 

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Charity Matters Inspiration

Empathy

“Empathy is simply listening, holding space, withholding judgement, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of you are not alone.”
Brene Brown

Summer has flown by, Labor Day is just around the corner and now everyone is officially back in school.  This year in addition to making sure your children have their school supplies and their backpacks , there is something more they should be packing as they head into their new school year….and that is empathy. I know it isn’t a “regular” on your back to school list but something worth adding for sure.

Working with hundreds of high school students each year, I am always in awe of what these students can accomplish and who they can be with the right guidance.  Students have so much noise coming at them constantly and sadly most messages students are receiving are not positive and do not make them stop and think.

As the school year begins, I wanted to share a message that applies to each of us, whether at work or at school. The simple reminder of empathy….which is the ability to understand and share the feeling of another.

So as we begin a new school year and talk to our children about what is important to focus on this year, lets remember that life is more than good grades, it is about being the best people we can be to one another. As Bill Bullard says, “The  highest form of knowledge is empathy.”

 

charity matters.

 

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Raising Philanthropic Children

Everydayhero

As many of you know my husband is an avid triathlete and especially a cyclist. So two weeks ago when he and a couple friends decided to compete in the Tour de Big Bear I began to wonder if they could possibly turn this into a fundraiser. Their ride/race was 107 miles uphill to 8700 feet altitude and I thought maybe he could ride for charity?  So, I began looking for a way to incorporate fun events like this with making a difference. Here is a super cool tool called Everydayhero, that I found (a little late for this ride) but thought it was more than worth sharing for future events.

The video explains it better than I can but the premise is that with Everydayhero you can create your own page/platform for causes that you love by doing things as simple as going for a run or bike ride. You can also track what you give and to what causes, whether time or financial support and begin to measure what you are doing. Think of it as the FitBit of philanthropy. If you want to bring your friends in on something you can do that too. It is a great tool if your girl scout troop or child’s sports team is trying to fund raise or any other project that is important to you. Just pick your cause, set up your page and go….

I don’t think people give to see their impact, I believe people give because they care. However, it is a powerful tool to measure goals, bring people together for a common cause and ultimately to make a difference. With tools like this we can all be heroes!

Charity Matters

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.

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Charity Matters Quotes

Wow, you are impressive!

“Volunteers do not necessarily have the time; they just have the heart.”

Elizabeth Andrew

In these last dog days of summer the last thing we seem to be able to muster is any extra energy. The days are long and hot, the pace is slow and energy low. We have had a busy year and are feeling the need to recharge our batteries before our routine starts up again and the kids head back to school in a few short weeks. So now seems like as good as time as any to reflect on all the hard work we did this past year to serve others. Last month we discussed how much Americans gave to nonprofits (4 billion in case you missed it!) and this month we are looking at the results from a division of the US Labor Department called The Corporation for National Community Service, which conducted surveys on 60,000 households to ask the question who is volunteering in America?

Here are the answers….

It seems that the majority of our American volunteers are married white women aged 35 to 44, who are parents of children under the age of 18. This accounted for 28.9% of volunteers and the next age group of women was right behind at 28% of volunteers ages 45-54. The younger crowd did not seem as interested with only 18.4% of 20 to 24 year olds volunteering. 

Just how much time did we give? Well it seems that the average amount of time spent volunteering was 52 hours and most people worked for one or two causes. That is more than a full work week and a really impressive number! Lets hear it for the girls, they out volunteered the boys 27.8% vs. 21.8%! The boys numbers just keep climbing which is fantastic news for everyone!

Since we are breaking this all down it seems that race and education factor into the numbers as well. The races broke down like this; whites 26.4%, blacks 19.3%, Asians 17.9% and hispanics at 15.5% volunteering. When it comes to giving up your time it seems that the higher your education, the more time you give. Those with college degrees or higher education volunteered more than 10% than those without.

Lastly, where you live may have something to do with your volunteering.  43% of everyone in Utah volunteers time, which ranks them the number one state with Minnesota coming in second place and Louisiana in last place at 50th. However, those roles were reversed when it came down to top cities, the number one city was Minneapolis and Salt Lake came in at second place, so next year the competition is on!

Regardless of where you live, what your ethnic backround is or your education…over 62.6 million of you gave your time to help someone else last year and that is what really matters. People helping people, improving others lives and their own in the process….now that is impressive!

charity Matters

 

YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.

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Making Waves

As the summer days pass by faster and faster we all crave a little bit more sand and surf, especially here in California. The past few years my summers have been spent running a nonprofit leadership program where I have the privilege of working with  extraordinary high school and college age students. Five years ago when I showed up, I met a fantastic family of four girls ( The McDermott sisters) who had all been a part of our organization, each was at a different phase of their leadership journey.

We challenge all our students to find their magis, the Latin word for more, to search for their meaning and purpose and to share it with others.  We also teach our students that you cannot lead unless you serve. I am so proud of these amazing young women, identifying their gifts and finding a way to give back to others. Take at peek at their MORE and our fun conversation about their inspiring work mentoring young girls through their organization Making Waves.

Charity Matters: What was the moment you knew you needed to act and start Making Waves?

Micaela McDermott: Our goal was to provide a positive and supportive community of ladies that will always welcome and embrace one another. When I was working as a surf instructor, I realized the need for a strong female community in and around surfing. There are plenty of young girls that want to learn how to surf, but not very many ladies in the lineup. Entering into this sport can be intimidating when you don’t have a supportive community or role models to help guide you through it. Coming from a family of 4 girls, we all experienced some of the social challenges that girls go through during middle school. Our hope when creating the Making Waves community was to bridge both these experiences and provide young girls with a safe and welcoming group on and off the water.

charity matters: So tell us what is making waves mission and your hope for Making Waves?

Cameron McDermott: The mission of Making Waves is to promote a love of sun, surf, and good vibrations among all women. The sun represents promoting a conscious mindset of our impact on the Earth. Making Waves has been involved in multiple beach cleanups and discussions involving our environmental impact on the planet. Instead of leaving carbon footprints, we focus on our footprints in the sand. Surf stand for of course, surfing, but also all around staying active and taking care of our bodies. And finally, good vibrations refers to carrying ourselves in a positive light and passing that light on to others, like a vibration.  

Our hope in starting Making Waves was to provide mentorship for middle school girls through the sport of surfing. We want these girls to then take their passion, whatever it is, and make their own wave.  It is an amazing feeling when you know you are impacting the world.

Charity Matters: What fuels you to keep doing this work?

Cameron McDermott: The best feeling in the world is seeing somebody catch their first wave! They are so stoked when they are able to finally stand up after falling a few times. Seeing the joy and excitement that the girls experience while surfing and learning together makes every moment worth it.

Charity Matters: When do you know you have made a difference?

Micaela McDermott: When you see that big bright smile on someone’s face, you know you have made a positive impact. If each girl leaves feeling stoked and motivated to “make their wave,” then it was a successful day

Charity Matters: Tell us what success you have had? What has your impact been?

Delaney McDermott: One of the achievements of Making Waves is receiving a  grant from The Pollination Project in 2017. We have also been invited to speak at several conferences for The Association of Catholic Student Councils, sharing out story with over 500 middle school students in Southern California. Among our events and meet-ups, we have had over 100 participants over the last 4 years.

Charity Matters: What life lessons have you learned from this experience? How has this journey changed you?

Micaela, Cameron & Delaney McDermott: Throughout the life of Making Waves, we have had the opportunity to learn some amazing life lessons from the experience and from the ladies involved. We have learned to stay persistent and steadfast on goals, but also to enjoy the ride. We have learned the importance of a supportive and positive community, and the inspiration and motivation that this community provides to people. Most of all, we have learned how to be better friends, supporters, mentors, and sisters because of this experience.

Regardless of age, everyone has the ability to find their “more.” The McDermott sisters are an incredible example of sharing their passion through Making Waves with others!

CHARITY MATTERS
YOUR REFERRAL IS THE GREATEST COMPLIMENT,  IF YOU ARE SO MOVED OR INSPIRED, WE WOULD LOVE YOU TO SHARE AND INSPIRE ANOTHER.

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