FEATURES

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

When actor Michael Kash mounts the stage at Toronto’s Theatre Centre on February 20, he’ll be doing more than just channeling his character in Eugene O’Neill’s gripping and rarely performed play, Hughie. He’ll also be assisting people living with asthma and serious allergies by raising buckets of cash.

All proceeds from that night’s performance - potentially $7,000 to $12,000 – will benefit Anaphylaxis Canada, a national registered charity, information resource and support group for children and adults grappling with allergies, especially those relating to food, which can be fatal.

The benefit is just another example of Kash’s ongoing altruism. He is the founder of the Alley Theatre Workshop, which since 2005 has operated with the stated mandate of always giving back to the community through charities involving children.

Proceeds are raised through performances and fundraisers organized by ATW and so far, the charities chosen have had some personal connection to Kash. For example, the first such venture, during ATW’s 2005 production of Ann Randolph’s Squeezebox, came about because Randolph talked...

BY IAN WALKER, www.samaritanmag.com

As a young boy back in Beirut, Lebanon, Marwan Hage, now the Hamilton Tiger-Cats offensive lineman and founder of the charity Hage's Heroes, often drifted off to sleep to the echo of gunfire.

During the day, he couldn't just step outside on a whim to visit with friends. Instead, the basement of his childhood home often served as his playground, especially when the war outside got too close. It was there that family members would try their best to distract the youngest of four children from the fighting on the streets.

Hage contends he's a better man for what he lived through in Beirut. Those images of smashed windows, houses trembling and the sights and sounds of rockets sent screaming from the mountains, lighting up the night like fireworks, now serve as daily reminders.

He moved to Montreal with his family just before his 10^th birthday. “War's not pretty,” Hage tells Samaritanmag.com. “I remember those early days very well. It was an ugly time — countrymen killing each other on the streets. As a kid, you don't understand it all, but you know something isn't right. Luckily, my family shielded me from the uglier aspects or it may have been different. I wasn't scarred by war...

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

It’s hard to believe that another chapter could possibly be added to the story of yoga, which already spans the globe and the millennia. And yet a new, perhaps unlikely group — at-risk and incarcerated youth — is discovering the stress relief, mood-enhancement and improved balance and fitness benefits of regular yoga practice.

That’s thanks to the New Leaf Yoga Foundation. The Toronto-based registered charity brings downward dog, shavasana, meditation and conscious breathing — and the above-mentioned benefits they confer — to teens “overcoming histories of abuse, neglect, incarceration, gang-involvement, addiction, marginalization and other factors that have led them to be identified as ‘at risk,’” according to the Foundation’s website, www.newleafyoga.org. 

Those involved insist yoga teaches real-world coping skills (focus, relaxation and calming breath, for example) that youth can access to constructively deal with anxiety and anger rather than acting out.  Plus, it’s fun. Judging by the testimonials of former students...

BY AARON BROPHY, www.samaritanmag.com

On any given weekend you might find Oshawa, Ontario's Rob Weir catching a pass from former National Hockey League legend Darryl Sittler, attempting to deke around hall-of-famer Marcel Dionne, or ducking and dodging the elbows and slashes of the Hanson Brothers of Slap Shot fame.

Swirling around the ice with former pros is an unlikely place for a guy like Weir, who didn't even start playing hockey until the age of 20, but he's got a good reason. Weir's the program coordinator of the Heart & Stroke Foundations' Hockey For Heart series of charitable hockey tournaments across Ontario. It's his job to play hockey with the pros.

"It's the greatest job in the world," says Weir, 40, with that same sense of awe as a 10-year-old autograph seeker by the side doors of the Air Canada Centre. "I'm literally getting paid to play hockey with [former Toronto Maple Leafs great] Wendel Clark."

Getting to share the ice with the likes of Clark came with a cost, though. The whole reason the Hockey For Heart tournaments exist is because Weir witnessed his own father Roger Weir have a heart attack on the ice at the age of 46 while playing a game with him in 1993.

"I was sitting on the bench, looked down at the other end of the ice where the play was, looked back at my dad and saw that he had fallen over and instantly knew that something wasn't right because I knew it wasn't from something that had happened during the play," Weir recalls of that tragic night.

BY STEVE McLEAN, www.samaritanmag.com

The National Hockey League Alumni Association has raised more than $16 million for Alzheimer's disease research since launching a Toronto tournament that gave pick-up players the chance to play shinny with some of their former professional heroes in 2006.

The Scotiabank Pro-Am for Alzheimer's expanded to Edmonton in 2010 and Calgary this year, when it raised $5.1 million, and will move into Vancouver next year. Four members of the non-profit alumni association -- executive director Mark Napier, chairman Mike Pelyk, Wendel Clark and Johnny Bower -- were honoured for their efforts at the Social Work Doctors' Colloquium's eighth annual Award of Merit celebration dinner at Toronto's University Club on Nov. 30.

"This is something that all of us are affected by somewhere along the line," Clark, a former Toronto Maple Leafs captain, told www.samaritanmag.com before the dinner. "We know somebody or have family members with Alzheimer's."

Half-a-million Canadians have Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia, and approximately 71,000 of them are under 65. This year alone, more than 103,000 Canadians will develop dementia, and an aging population is expected to push that figure to more than 257,000 by 2038. Alzheimer's still has no known cause or cure.

BY STEVE McLEAN, www.samaritanmag.com

Toronto's Cheryl Perera was appalled when she learned about the child sex trade in Bangkok, Thailand during a high school civics class. But she soon turned her disgust into action as she convinced her parents and school principal to allow her to go to Sri Lanka on her own for three-and-a-half months when she was 17 so she could see what was happening first-hand with child sex slaves, and ended up going undercover in a sting operation to arrest a sexual predator.

"I was able to put myself in the shoes of a child," Perera, now 26, told www.samaritanmag.com after a recent presentation at Toronto's Upper Canada College. "And even for that short time, I was able to understand what it's like to have your childhood commodified. That gave me a whole new resolve to do even more."

Perera founded OneChild, an organization to inspire youth to take action against child sex slavery, in 2005. That was the year she also launched a successful petition campaign that convinced Air Canada to show an in-flight video to sensitize passengers to the social, humanitarian and legal consequences of engaging in child sex tourism. More than 22 million people have now viewed that low-budget video created by OneChild.

It's estimated that 1.2 million children around the world are sold into slavery every year, and that two million children are involved in the global sex trade. It's perhaps most prevalent in Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia and Brazil, but goes on in North America as well.

BY NICK KREWEN, www.samaritanmag.com

Mexican, Dali, Imperial, Fu Manchu, Pancho Villa, Handlebar, Pencil, Chevron, Walrus – if we’re talking moustaches, it must be Movember.

For a 30-day stretch during the month of November, men in 14 countries unite in their refusal to shave their upper lip; the resulting growth their personal symbol in the war against prostate cancer, an insidious disease that afflicts one in seven males.

By growing moustaches, these “Mo Bros” — the 2010 Canadian tally was almost 119,000 —  raise awareness regarding men’s health issues and research funds, procuring almost $22.3 million last year alone for Prostate Cancer Canada.

“We basically look at it as our Christmas,” Steve Jones, president and CEO of Prostate Cancer Canada and Movember’s official Canadian partner, tells www.samaritanmag.com.

Since 2004,  Movember’s popularity has skyrocketed, jumping from Australia to the U.K., South Africa, Scandinavia, the U.S., Canada and several other countries within a few short years.

The premise is simple: register online as either an individual or a team, procure pledges and grow your stache. There are prizes for those who raise the most funds.

“It started as a joke,” Movember co-founder, executive director and CEO Adam Garone, tells www.samaritanmag.com. The initiative by the native of Melbourne, Australia has raised $176 million globally.

BY NICK KREWEN, www.samaritanmag.com

As the founder and executive director of War Child Canada and War Child U.S.A., the non-profit organization that helps raise awareness and support of war affected children globally through local and international initiatives, Toronto’s Dr. Samantha Nutt has seen her share of atrocity.

In her new book, Damned Nations – Greed, Guns, Armies & Aid (Signal/McClelland & Stewart), in stores October 25, Nutt examines the plight of humanitarianism on the frontlines of such war-torn countries as Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan, with heartfelt and startling eye-witness testimony on one hand and a sober analysis of the realities and actions that would result in a massive turnaround to help end war and suffering.

Nutt, recently awarded the Order Of Canada for her contributions to improve the conditions of citizens in the world’s worst conflict zones, explains in her book why eliminating the gender divide, implementing education and employment opportunities, and installing a stable infrastructure of legal aid offer hope for the future.

On a personal and local level, she offers several suggestions on how people who want to rally for change can get involved, from donation tips and consideration for where your money is going to lobbying for changes to the Official Development Assistance (ODA) policy.

Dr. Nutt recently spoke with Samaritanmag.com’s Nick Krewen about Damned Nations and what can happen when inexperienced people and organizations try to do good.