kids

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

For Sarah McLachlan's symphony tour this summer, the multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter has teamed with Tickets-for-Charity.com, which offers seats for various events "at the same or better price you'll find elsewhere -- and support great causes in the process." 

McLachlan's VIP packages include one front row seat and a pre-performance excusive meet & greet and monies raised go to her Sarah McLachlan School of Music, whose mission is to bring music education to vulnerable and at-risk youth through free music programs dedicated to inspiring confidence, creativity and a sense of community among students.

No price is listed in the press release or on the site, but one can click "notify me" next to the concert date of your choice (some are sold out already) and it will send an email with the subject line "Please contact me when Sarah McLachlan-Symphony Tour tickets in [city] are available and notify of TFC events."

All tickets will be available for pick up at will-call only with no name changes permitted. The name used to purchase the tickets will be the name provided to will-call and ID must be presented at the box office. There is also a two ticket limit per purchase. The tour runs from June 22 at Toronto's Molson Canadian Amphitheatre until July 8 at New Jersey's Borgata Event Center.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Montreal pop-rock band Simple Plan, whose eponymous Foundation has made substantial donations over the past seven years to various child and youth related causes, will be honoured with the 2012 Allan Waters Humanitarian Award at the Juno Gala Dinner & Awards March 31 in Ottawa, presented by the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (CARAS).

Singer Pierre Bouvier, drummer Chuck Comeau, bassist David Desrosiers, and guitarists Sebastien Lefebvre and Jeff Stinco will be on hand to receive the award.

"I don't think you ever expect to receive this kind of honour and I don't think you start getting involved with social and philanthropic work to win awards like this," Comeau told Samaritanmag.com via email.

"I believe you do it because there's something in your heart that tells you you NEED to be doing this and because it feels right. So obviously, to be recognized for it with such a prestigious award was definitely a little bit of a shock for us and a tremendous moment for the Foundation and for the band."

The Allan Waters Humanitarian Award recognizes outstanding Canadian artists whose humanitarian contributions have positively enhanced the social fabric of Canada. Named after CHUM Ltd. founder Allan Waters, the decision to present the award to Simple Plan was made by the CARAS board of directors.

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.

BY KAREN BLISS, www.samaritanmag.com

Fans of the late Whitney Houston can honour her memory by donating to the Whitney E. Houston Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, the Houston family requested in a message on the late singer’s official web site.

Houston — who died in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles on Feb. 11, at the age of 48, the cause of which is yet to be determined — attended the New Jersey public school as a child when it was called Franklin School.

Donations can only be accepted via personal cheque.  A donation form is available for download on the site, which lists the South Plainfield, NJ address to which the cheque should be mailed.

According to the Academy’s web site, the goal of the school is that “all staff members will work in a collaborative manner to assure that a minimum of 85 percent of students will be at standard or above on district, state and national tests.”

The building has been an educational institution for more than 137 years, it states on the school’s web site. The original Franklin School was built from 1825 to 1832 for a cost of $233.93 and was originally just two stories. In 1873, a four-room brick building was built. In the years that followed more additions were made. By 1915, it had more than 20 classrooms, an office and 418 auditorium.

BY DARCY ATAMAN, www.samaritanmag.com  

Sexual violence is rampant in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The UN estimates that over 200,000 women and girls have been raped since 1998, but the true extent is not known. Missing from these figures are women and girls held as sex slaves or forced wives and men who are also victimized. The world has never known such extreme levels of sexual violence. Yet this crisis is largely ignored by the global community.

Two aid organizations, The Stephen Lewis Foundation (SLF) of Canada and Panzi Foundation USA (PFUSA) are working to change that. Both groups have joined forces with Panzi Hospital and Dr. Denis Mukwege in Bukavu, DRC to provide life-saving treatment and empowerment programs for women and girls.

SLF’s initiatives focus on HIV testing and care, psychosocial support, economic recovery via income-generating activities for the women, and educational support for the schoolchildren of rape survivors. 

“We absolutely had to expand our funding into Congo because the violence...

BY ANYA WASSENBERG, www.samaritanmag.com

Can kids come to the rescue of our endangered wildlife? Woodbridge, Ont.-based non-profit Earth Rangers educates and empowers young people to become involved, giving them the ammo they need to care and act.

Its colourful comprehensive website has games, videos, contests and online rewards for Bring Back The Wild, the kid-powered fundraising campaign launched in 2010 in collaboration with Nature Conservancy Canada that empowers kids to help protect animals and their habitats.

“Our focus is to communicate to children a positive science-based message on the importance of protecting biodiversity and adopting more sustainable behaviours,” it states in the “about” section of the site.

The organization reaches hundreds of thousands of children through interactive live animal shows performed in schools, at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum and at community events. It also engages kids through a national outreach campaign on YTV and via more than 100,000 Earth Rangers.

“It’s not something that’s being forced on them by teachers ,” Earth Rangers executive director and co-CEO Peter Kendall tells www.samaritanmag.com. “It’s amazing the letters we get from parents. One parent wrote how she cried when she realized her child was getting involved in trying to help.” 

Here are the facts: an estimated 25 percent of mammals, 31 percent of reptiles and 33 percent of ...

BY KIM HUGHES, www.samaritanmag.com

Oscar Wilde famously (and somewhat sagely) opined that youth is wasted on the young, but he might have retracted had he met any one of the 100 or so exceptional, altruistic kids unearthed by the Build-A-Bear Workshop’s Huggable Heroes program.

Running annually since 2004, the unique interactive retailer’s event seeks to recognize kids aged eight to 18 who have “made a commitment to serve, help others, and make a difference in their community,” usually by spearheading a project or website that, for instance, collects food donations to feed animals in shelters, supports adult literacy programs or the environment or assists senior citizens.

Take-charge kids from across North America and Puerto Rico (where Build-A-Bear Workshops have a bricks-and-mortar presence) are nominated for their good deeds, often by teachers or parents. Shortlists are created by an independent judging organization, which bases its decision on criteria including impact of the accomplishments (75 percent of total score) and inspiration to others relating to the cause (25 percent of total score). The kids must also submit a story about themselves...

BY JIM SLOTEK, www.samaritanmag.com

Sometimes bad guys make the best good guys.

Career bad dude, Luis Guzman — who got his start as an actor when a casting director for Miami Vice asked him to “kill me with your eyes” — was already concerned with giving back to his ‘hood before the bright lights beckoned.

In the '80s, the Puerto Rican-born Guzman was a social worker in the Lower East Side Manhattan neighbourhood in which he grew up. His Miami Vice break came when “two young people didn’t show up to my program, and I went out into the street looking for them. While I was doing that, I ran into a friend who was writing for TV and he gave me a phone number for an audition,” he said during a small roundtable interview in Honolulu for the movie, Journey 2.

Now living in Vermont, he gives frequent motivational speeches in schools in troubled neighbourhoods. “I go and I try to motivate people to help themselves, to not become third, fourth, or fifth generation welfare recipients, to say there’s a better life for you out there. It could be as an actor, librarian, teacher, working for the Coast Guard...