My New Red Shoes-A Love Story


In Spring 2009 we participated in the walk for homelessness with My New Red Shoes, a local nonprofit that provides brand new clothing and shoes to underprivileged children in the Bay Area so that they may start their first day of school with pride. We fell in love with their simple concept that is so powerful. Who doesn't remember those first day of school jitters and worrying about what to wear? Imagine you are a homeless child, anticipating the first day of school. How wonderful to have a brand new pair of shoes and a gift card to shop for a new outfit.
We have learned a lot about the surprising statistics about the largest growing population of homeless in the Bay Area-(children under the age of 5) and wanted to share what we had learned. In May we invited friends for a Shiny Shoe Party-asking that they bring new shoes and spare change. (Would not be a ChAngels event without the change!)
We created a carnival where friends played games and and learned a fact at each station. They, too, were surprised and inspired to help other kids. We collected over $400 in change-especially thanks to Mrs. Lane-and donated over 50 pairs of shoes.
In September, we were invited to participate in the Clothing for Confidence Back to School Fashion Show that raised over $50,000 for My New Red Shoes.
We are so proud to be a part of this organization and hope you will visit their website to learn how you can lend a hand to homeless kids.


http://www.mynewredshoes.org/

Escuelita-The Little School
We received a request from Kate's aunt Allie to support a small school in Costa Rica, where Kate's grandmother was from. The little school was started by family friends, Tita and Alberto Perez, and served children with learning disabilities. Without this little school-the Escuelita-these children would sit in the corner, not able to learn, and would advance each year, having passed no important benchmarks. Many would graduate without even being able to read.
Their needs were so simple-just basic school supplies. We sent two boxes filled with pencils, stickers, scissors, erasers, paper, maps and coloring books. Here is the response we received from Tita: "What an excitement it was to open the two boxes you sent us!!! You really have no idea how thankful we are, in the name of all the kids, for such gesture. We really don't realize how lucky we are to have beautiful schools with lots of wonderful material that helps us enhance our knowledge. The three classrooms were built inside that gym you see, among the shacks. It was an abandoned gymnasium and the government gave it to us, so we fixed it and painted it, and tried to do an ideal world among the horrible environment. Thank you also for the beautiful messages you sent. Big hug from all of us in the Escuelita."
How wonderful to be able to help these children in another part of the world with something as simple as pencils.

Kids Against Poverty

Emily Addicott, from Kids Against Poverty, was our guest speaker in March 2009. She brought bins of bracelet supplies including glass beads which have been hand painted and then hand fired over fire pits by mothers in Ghana in order to support their children. The girls of ChAngels were busy making these gorgeous bracelets which were later sold at stands set up at local spots such as Draegers and Menlo School. 100% of money raised goes directly to help an orphanage in Africa along with providing a mobile school set up with solar power generated computers. Thanks so much to Emily for giving us the opportunity to learn about this orphanage.

In February, 2009 we took a tour and delivered dinner to the Ronald McDonald House in Palo Alto. The Ronald McDonald House provides a house near to Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital for families of children with life-threatening illnesses. It costs $10 a night to stay there which can be a hardship for families when they have to pay all the medical bills of their sick child. We were surprised on our tour, however, that it was only $10 a night given that they had such nice facilities. They had a great game room for the kids, a huge kitchen, a library, and a computer room for families to send messages back to home.

The project we did for the Ronald McDonald House was making dinner for all the families living there. We provided lasagna for the main course, fruit and veggie platters for the side dishes, and for the best part of the meal, dessert, we made brownies. In addition to providing dinner we were able to donate $100 to the Ronald McDonald House. We hope to do something for them again.

To learn more about the Ronald McDonald House, you can visit: http://www.ronaldhouse.net/

In January of 2009 the ChAngels girls took a trip to Redwood City where they brought bags of blankets, home-made cat-nip toys and play sticks for the cats and dogs of Pets In Need. (PIN) is a non-profit shelter that adopts dogs and cats from public facilities when they have run out of space. They receive no local, state or federal tax money and almost 90% of the funding is from donations from individuals or organizations that care. They were happy with our donation of a small sum of money from our ChAngles jars and the equipment for the pets. The ChAngels kids took a tour of the facility and played with the animals. The animals were happy to play with the toys they brought!

On November 22, 2008, ChAngels held its first persimmon sale in front of a local retail store. We sold persimmons, brownies, and other home-made baked goods. We advertised the sale in the Country Almanac (a free little blurb) and by sending out emails to friends and family. We collected all of our fruit from our backyards, friends’ trees, and even some neighborhood trees, and we had a big baking day at one of the ChAngel’s houses to make the cakes and brownies. We made over $400 to donate to charities. We had a ton of fun at the persimmon sale, and we were very pleased by its success!