FEATURES

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

It is no exaggeration to say that being born "albino" in the East African nation of Tanzania is one of the unluckiest fates life can hand you. It's also fair to say that Canadian activist and philanthropist Peter Ash has done more to assist Tanzanians with albinism though advocacy, education, funding and sheer resolve than anyone else on the planet. 

In most parts of the world, albinism is seen for what it is: a congenital disorder characterized by the absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes due to the absence or defect of an enzyme involved in the production of melanin.

People with albinism ("albino" is considered derogatory, Ash says, and is slowly being replaced) are highly sensitive to sun, classified as legally blind (development of the optical system is highly dependent on the presence of melanin), but are otherwise correctly perceived as ordinary if striking-looking people with white hair and fair skin.

In Tanzania — thought to be the albinism's physiological ground zero where the rate of incidence is 10-times higher than in other countries, occurring in roughly one out of every 2,000 people — people with albinism (PWA) are perceived as inhuman: ghosts or the evil spawn of an African woman and a white man.

Often, a best-case scenario for a Tanzanian with albinism is discrimination or being ostracized, denied an education and treated as a freak. Worst case scenario? Murder or savage mutilation; the guerilla taking of body parts which command a dizzyingly high price (by African standards) on the black market.

BY JORDAN ADLER, www.samaritanmag.com

When M&M Meat Shops co-founder Mac Voisin decided that his frozen foods business would start donating to a little-known cause in 1989 -- less than a decade after he started M&M Meats with Mark Nowak -- he made what he calls "the big discovery." He found that Canada had the highest incidence per capita of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the world.

"At that time, there were about 150,000 sufferers and [Canadians] raised next to nothing for research. So we said, 'Well, why don't they raise any money for research?' And [scientists] said, 'Well, no one will admit they have the disease.' So, if you don't admit you have the disease, there's no awareness. If there's no awareness, there will never be any money for research," Voisin tells Samaritanmag.

This "big discovery" led Voisin to start building awareness and raising funds for the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation of Canada (CCFC). In 1989, M&M Meats hosted a charity BBQ day at around 50 of their Ontario locations. Volunteers grilled and handed out hot dogs and hamburgers in exchange for a small donation, and raised close to $50,000. That donation total doubled the next year.

Twenty-three years later, more than 450 M&M Meat Shops across Canada still barbeque to fund CCFC research that goes to finding a cure for IBD. M&M Meats has raised almost $23 million for the CCFC. This year's Charity BBQ Day will be held on Saturday, May 12, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at all M&M Meat Shops.

BY NICK KREWEN, www.samaritanmag.com

Members of the Canadian music industry now have somewhere to turn when they experience hard times.

Operating under the slogan "Created by the music community for the music community," The Unison Benevolent Fund (UBF) will eventually provide emergency relief for the estimated 12,800-strong Canadian music industry workforce that are self-employed or contract workers and aren't eligible for the benefits usually earned by salaried workers. .

However, UBF executive director Sheila Hamilton tells Samaritanmag the fund isn't quite operational, despite the generous contributions of several corporate and individual benefactors to the tune of $800,000.

"We're very close," says Hamilton, a former president and executive director of the Canadian Country Music Association. "We need $1 million in the endowment fund to really be operational."

Hamilton says the $1 million figure is the benchmark dollar amount set by the non-profit charity's board of directors for the endowment fund to start generating significant interest and become self-sufficient.

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

If the best way to de-stigmatize something is to boldly put it under people's noses, then Frances Darwin's Henna Heals is making conditional female baldness both acceptable and, perhaps improbably, kind of chic. 

The Toronto-based photographer's company provides a novel service: beautiful designs applied to the smooth skulls of cancer patients who've lost their hair due to chemotherapy using naturally sourced henna dyes.

The swirling, intricate drawings, which are safe, temporary and applied by skilled artists, command the eye to the head of the henna wearer, inspiring awe rather than pity while offering an alternative to wigs or hats.

Perhaps more importantly, these henna "crowns" offer women suffering hair loss -- and the accompanying lost sense of femininity that brings -- a chance to feel uniquely lovely while inviting gentle dialog about a tricky subject. Darwin's ensuing photo shoots capture it all for posterity.

While most corporate taglines are studies in hyperbole, the mantra for Henna Heals powerfully drives home their mission: "We want to empower you. We want to help you feel beautiful, and give you the confidence to be a walking work of art."

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

Toronto-based Michael Bowman and Cathy Cutz could blab your ears purple name-checking "synergy" and "metrics" and "low-hanging fruit" having worked for decades in media buying and marketing (Bowman) and event marketing (Cutz) for various corporations and non-profits including Christian relief agency World Vision, where they met.

But chat with them about their newly launched 145 Live Solutions and prepare to be flattened by good, old fashioned enthusiasm so straight-up palpable the phone line practically crackles.

In simplified terms, 145 Live Solutions spearheads relationships between businesses, non-profits and musicians, fulfilling the need of one by leveraging the strength of the other, while serving as interpreter (and matchmaker, manager, strategist) in subsequent executions.

The idea is an extension of World Vision's Artists Associate program, which provides tour support in exchange for child sponsorship generation at live shows. Bowman and Cutz oversaw that program for close to eight years and realized its limitations. Some artists have other causes dearer to their hearts and 145 Live Solutions can best pair up the right artist with the right charity and right company.

When corporations foot the bill to have non-profits travel with touring bands, for example, they get positive PR blowback (and tax breaks), while non-profits tap into a vast pool of potential new donors. Musicians in turn can raise cash for their favourite charitable causes while helping offset overhead by coordinating tour sponsorship with a charity partner.

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

Leave it to a filmmaker to come up with the ultimate snappy tagline for his own life -- "Andrew Nisker: activist, filmmaker, proponent for change."

With that, visitors to the Toronto-based documentarian's website, know immediately what they're dealing with, though they might be surprised (and delighted) to discover that humour plays as much a role in Nisker's storytelling as his passionate commitment to social reform.

Nisker's forceful yet highly amusing films - 2007's Garbage: The Revolution Starts at Home and 2009's Chemerical: Redefining Clean for a New Generation -- both drive home the point that simple changes made in the household can vastly reduce everybody's environmental footprint.

In an era when environmental messaging can seem overwhelming, a straightforward theme such as that is highly resonant, and likely explains why Nisker's related work as a public speaker has been so effective. Kids get it, adults get it, educators and media get it and everybody can get on board without having to invest heaps of money or time in order to swiftly realize tangible results.

Talk about a revolution. And it pretty much all began in Nisker's backyard.

"The garbage strike in Toronto in 2002 was the 'aha' moment for my film Garbage," he tells Samaritanmag. "Garbage was being piled in Trinity Bellwoods Park near my home and I'd walk by those piles every day on my way to work, which got me thinking about where all this stuff was coming from and where it's all going.

BY IAN WALKER, www.samaritanmag.com

Charity is nothing new to Scott Hartnell, the youngest of four siblings and whose parents were school teachers. He is one of the more generous Philadelphia Flyers when it comes to donating his time to visit sick children and last season was named the Chairman of the Beard for the NHLPA's annual Beard-A-Thon. Still, not even his annual golf tournament holds the promise of the #HartnellDown Foundation. Based on a Twitter hashtag that was created to make fun of Hartnell's propensity for falling down, the #HartnellDown Foundation was created in January with a goal of providing funds to charities that focus on three things that are most important to the 29-year-old: hockey, children and his hometown of Lloydminster, Alta./Sask.

Samaritanmag.com recently caught up with the Flyers winger and burgeoning philanthropist to talk about his reasons for wanting to give back.

What's the motivation behind your charitable endeavours?

"I believe athletes, celebrities, public figures, whatever you want to call it, they have a responsibility to give back to the communities they live in and grew up because those people in those places have given so much to us. Whether it be supporting us through the regular season or playoffs or when we were little chasing our dreams, to me it's a no-brainer."

What's your earliest recollection of giving back?

"Growing up, both my parents were school teachers and were involved with special needs kids -- integrating them into the classroom and activities during and after school and things like that. So I just was always around that way of thinking that everyone was entitled to a regular life. Some people are maybe afraid or don't know how to act around people that may be different than them, but to me everyone's special in their own way. That would be my first experience, not so much giving back, but seeing how much your time and effort means to people."

BY IAN WALKER, www.samaritanmag.com

The genesis of the #HartnellDown Foundation was a slight, a way to publicly poke fun of a NHL player who couldn't go even a period without having to pick himself up off the cold, hard ice.

It was game 6 of the 2010 Stanley Cup final between the Philadelphia Flyers and Chicago Blackhawks when the Twitter hashtag hartnelldown was born. In the third period, with mere minutes left in regulation, Flyers winger Scott Hartnell scored to tie the game at 3-3. It was at that precise moment when long-time Flyers' fan Seth Hastings had seen enough. On the play, Hartnell could be found yet again prone on the ice.

And here's the thing: It wasn't the first such instance that June evening. Hartnell also opened the Flyers' scoring, but only after first scrambling back to his skates.

“I just remember thinking, 'Next season, I'm going to have to keep track of how many times this guy falls,' ” Hastings tells Samaritanmag.com. “It's as simple as that. It really just began with a cult following on Twitter, but slowly it started getting bigger and bigger as last season wore on.”

True enough. But it wasn't until mid-November of this season did #hartnelldown start to take on a life of its own...

And he didn't stop there.