Creative Chatter, a local non-profit, reached out to us to see if we would be interested in having a Digital Selfie Billboard Fundraising Campaign for Birthdays For All. After googling to find out what that meant and reading this article on it from CNN we were enthusiastically on board, starting with making our own from our daughters first Birthday. Her words upon seeing it, “We’re famous now!!” Our sign says, “Celebrate Foster Kids! #BirthdaysForAll.org”
You can create your own Digital Billboard Selfie and have it benefit Birthdays For All, Just hashtag the text on your billboard with Birthdays For All and 50% of the $25 will go to gifts for foster children. We can’t wait to see your digital selfies up on the billboard! They can be of anything you like but we love the ideas of birthday celebrations of all kinds, kids, adults and furbabies! We get photos of the billboards submitted with the Birthdays For All # and we will be posting them on our facebook page as well! Go HERE to get started!
Every year, Charlie Mag highlights the top 50 people who have made a big impact in the city of Charleston in their 50 Most Progressive list. Past honorees have included some of my favorite people in Charleston and some local celebrities. It is so exciting that Steffi has been named in the 2016 Charlie’s 50 Most Progressive! She is being recognized for her idea to bring birthday cheers to local foster children who don’t always get to celebrate their birthday.
“These kids have all suffered trauma. They have been removed from their families, which is a kid’s worst nightmare. We want them to know that the community cares about them, and they haven’t been forgotten. Foster care in SC is in a state of crisis because there just aren’t enough foster parents. I want to raise awareness so that others can see the need, think and talk about it, and maybe feel a call to do something about it.” – Steffi Green
May 3rd, 2016 is Lowcountry Giving Day! Not only is it the biggest day of celebration throughout the Lowcountry giving community, but it is also the first birthday of Birthdays For All! It’s been a year since we launched our website on Lowcountry Giving Day, and we’re so proud of everything that we have accomplished.
Since we launched, we have provided birthday presents to every foster child in Charleston county, and every child living in group homes in Charleston, Berkley and Dorchester Counties. We have thrown toy drives at The Art Place Studio and The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry to bring people together and collect gifts. We’ve had many amazing wrapping parties with volunteers and organizations large and small. We’ve loved seeing local businesses get involved to help us collect gifts from our giving trees.
We want to continue working with the Lowcountry community to continue our progress and serve even more children in South Carolina. We would be honored to have your support on Lowcountry Giving Day on Tuesday, May 3rd 2016.
If you’d like to make a donation or pledge to Birthdays For All, you can use the awesome Text.Gives service by bumping the fist below:
After years of receiving emails from people asking me if I would kindly accept an inheritance of their estate worth a vast fortune from Nigeria, I’ve become skeptical of the emails I receive. Even with Birthdays For All, we’ve encountered people with fake identities who always seem to want to wire us huge sums of money from random countries. Well last month, I almost deleted an email from Jack Sortini, who said that he was from Johnson & Johnson, looking to help us out. My scam senses definitely kicked in. How would a huge multi-national organization, founded in 1886; find our tiny Charleston nonprofit, founded less than a year ago?
I put my skepticism aside, and after some Googling, I confirmed that it was legit. At first, I was surprised. Then I got super excited and replied before it was too late!
Jack asked if his team of 70+ sales reps could volunteer to help us during their South East regional meeting in Charleston. Being the kind people they are, they like to choose local charities to support when they conduct these meetings. They found Birthdays For All after researching local nonprofits and decided to do something really special for the local foster children in the Lowcountry area.
I sent Jack the wishlists (via DSS) from the 26 children with birthdays in April. He said they would see what they could do to get the presents. At the back of Jack’s mind he was a little worried about what he signed up for. How many Playstations or Xboxes would be on the list?
When he read the list, he realized that these kids didn’t ask for things that most of us would consider luxury.
The most popular request was a lotion set from Bath and Body Works from the teen girls. Other children asked for stuffed animals to give them comfort while in the foster home. One 11 year old boy asked for a stress ball.
When we showed up at the Mills House to meet Jack and his Johnson and Johnson team, we saw that they had bought everything on every wishlist and much more!
Ben gave a presentation about the story of Birthdays For All and the state of foster care in South Carolina. Afterwards, they did some fun team building exercises that involved different challenges to wrap all the presents as a team. They even included a singing contest for the best rendition of Happy Birthday!
We’d like to express our thanks to Jack Sortini and Johnson and Johnson for choosing to support Birthdays For All during their meeting. It’s amazing to see how a fun team activity can help create a special experience for these foster children as they tear open the wrapping paper on their birthdays.
Check out this video created by one of the Johnson and Johnson team.
To find out ways how you and your organization can help bring some birthday cheer to foster children, visit our Get Involved page.
We couldn’t do what we do at Birthdays For All if it wasn’t for our volunteers. We’ve been incredibly lucky to have some awesome and reliable people find us and offer their time to help out. This week we want to give a huge shout out to Caity, a First Baptist high school student who turned a class assignment to volunteer into a present wrapping, giving-tree assembling, gift sorting, donation getting bonanza.
Caity has spent many afternoons after school helping us sort gifts, wrap presents, and put together wishlist balloons for giving trees. Last month she went above and beyond and made her own giving tree with the wishlists we provided. She took the giving tree to the Office of Harvey and Vallini and asked the employees to get the gifts for each of the 26 children. The office managed to get all the gifts and made a lot of kids happy on their birthday.
We also want to thank First Baptist for having such an enriching assignment to inspire high school students to get involved with the community. Each student is required to volunteer for 10 hours at a local nonprofit. This sort of community based project helps teach children to do good and starts a lifetime of volunteering. The assignment also makes a big impact on the nonprofits that the students choose.
Caity has made a huge difference to local foster children on their birthdays. She is always game to help with whatever we need done and we really appreciate her shining spirit. If you are interested in volunteering, you can register for volunteer opportunities or get in touch info@birthdaysforall.org.
I hope it’s not too late to wish everybody a happy new year! We’ve been working hard to kick off 2016 with as much energy as we can muster!
On January 17th, we had our biggest Toy Drive event at the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry. We had live music from our good friends The Fishmongers, Snow Princesses courtesy of Princesses of Tides, our awesome volunteers were facepainting, and of course, all the kids (and adults) had free access to all the amazing features of The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry.
The turnout was incredible and we ended the night with a huge haul of birthday presents ready to be wrapped and delivered to our local foster kids. Here is a short video to give you a taste of what went down.
A huge thank you to Nichole and Kendall from the Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry for helping us organize such a great event. We can’t wait to do another one!
We’re lucky to have some awesome local Charleston businesses support the mission of Birthdays For All. As a way to show our appreciation and support local businesses, we want to tell you about them.
This week we are spotlighting Angels and Rascals, a store that sells like new and gently used clothes for children. They have some great Christmas outfits in the store right now! The owners, Erin and Scott Welk, have jumped at the chance to help Birthdays For All in every way they can. They donated a $50 gift certificate to Angels and Rascals to be used as a free raffle giveaway item at our next Toy Drive at the Children’s Museum. They also let us setup a giving tree in the Angels and Rascals store so that their customers can pick up a wishlists of a foster child with an upcoming birthdays. Their store in Mount Pleasant is also the latest location that serves as a donation site where people can drop off presents for foster children.
Tuesday is probably the most mundane of all the week days. It is the day that invokes no strong emotions from anyone. Everyone hates Mondays. We’re always glad to make it to Hump Day. Thursday is the new Friday. Friday will always be Friday.
However, next Tuesday (December 1st 2015) is different. Next Tuesdaytoday is #GivingTuesday!
Birthdays For All has joined #GivingTuesday, a global day of giving that harnesses the collective power of individuals, communities and organizations to encourage philanthropy and to celebrate generosity worldwide.
After we eat more than we ever should on Thanksgiving, most of us in the U.S. have the opportunity to take the day off work the next day to take part in the most widely recognized shopping event of the year, Black Friday. And if you didn’t get enough bargains on Black Friday, you get to shop online for deals on Cyber Monday.
After all of that excess shopping, we arrive at #GivingTuesday. We ask that you think about all of the children in Foster Care who live away from their families or in group homes. These kids don’t get excited about shopping incentives or online deals because they’re still wondering if they’ll ever get to see their parents again.
All they want this Holiday season is to be in a loving home and to have something they can be truly thankful for.
If you choose to take part in the #GivingTuesday movement this year, please consider making a gift to Birthdays For All and provide one of these children with a present.
As I’m writing this, Charleston is enjoying a “once in 200 years rainfall event” thanks to Hurricane Joaquin. Thankfully, we decided to throw our very first Toy Drive & Fun Fest event last weekend. We got lucky with the weather, had a ton of fun, and also hit the jackpot with all the amazing gifts that everyone donated. We don’t have an exact number yet, but our office now looks like this:
We had an estimated 250 attendees show up to The Art Place Studio to spend the afternoon playing on the jump castle, putt-putt golf, face painting, eating pizza and cupcakes, and winning prize give-aways.
We would have had a really tough time running things ourselves, but our volunteers made it possible. They all did an incredible job and many of them stayed well beyond their designated amount of time.
We were honored to be given a spot at this years Fam Jam, presented by The Children’s Museum of the Lowcountry. It was our first opportunity to present ourselves at a public event and meet people to tell them what we do. Each PLAY Partner had to have an activity to encourage “play” because:
PLAY is fundamental for children to learn about and interact with their world and gain mental, physical and social skills necessary to succeed in their adult lives.
