October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, ChAngels repeated the breast cancer walk that we did last year: some things are worth doing twice! We looped around the Stanford Dish with Poised, a personal training group, who organizes a walk called The Sisterhood of the Traveling Scarves. The Poised staff raises money from the walk to purchase head scarves for cancer patients that have lost their hair from chemotherapy.

Before walking we each thought of a breast cancer survivor that we know to honor on our walk. With the name of that woman stored in our head or tucked in our shoe, we walked in awareness and with hope. We thank Yvonne and Jill at Poised for sponsoring such a wonderful event and for providing the sparkly pink visors and fluffy pink boas that made it so festive!

San Bruno Fire

In September, ChAngels had a planning meeting to set our agenda for the year. We have so many great new ideas that we are all looking foward to.

However, pressing on our minds at our first meeting was the San Bruno fire: so tragic and so close to home. We made an immediate decision to donate $200 to the Red Cross Fund for San Bruno victims. We also send them our prayers.

Summer-Time Fun!

The ChAngles took a break over the summer for the most part, but we had a little fun raising a little change at two lemonade stand fundraisers. It was fun to keep the ChAngels spirit alive and thanks to all our thirsty friends that stopped by!

Two weeks ago, ChAngels went to an adult emergency shelter for homeless men and women. We prepared and served dinner for the people who were currently living there. It was so great to see them taking the food, smiling and saying "God bless you" or "thank you for doing this." You could see hope light up on their faces at the delight of having a home-cooked meal. We all felt great that we had really helped someone that needed it.

A special thanks to our honorary ChAngel, Madhavi, for helping us with this project!

ChAngels Goes Green

While discussing project ideas, ChAngles decided it wanted to do something green. In March, ChAngels went to pick weeds and mulch with an environmental group called Magic. We helped Magic by pulling out the non-native plants by hand and covering other areas with cardboard and mulch, which they hoped, in time, would kill all the weeds underneath. Magic plans these projects to help preserve the natural and native habitat of the Stanford Foothills. We are thankful to Magic for letting us help them with one of their programs. Now, every time we walk the Dish, we'll have a sense of accomplishment for having helped.

The Fiji Reads Project

In February, we scoured our personal libraries for books we could
share with some young friends in Fiji. Menlo Park artist Andrea Fono
and her husband Frank Rocky, a native of Fiji, have collected over
1500 books so far to send to Nukulalavu, SavuSavu, Fiji for their
first kindergarten. While the building construction is complete-the
bookshelves are empty. Thanks to a local shipper who agreed to
transport the books free of charge, the Fiji Read Project is well on
its way to reaching its goal of 5000 books to Fiji by June 2010. For
more information or to donate books, please contact Andrea Fono at fonoart@gmail.com
or 650-868-4171

Thank you to everyone who partied with us at the Pajama Party at Books Inc. Together over 100 pairs of pajamas and over 80 new books were collected for local homeless and foster children. Special thanks to Books Inc. who donated over $500, a portion of the sales from the eveing, to the Pajama Program. Between the cupcakes from Kara's, all those wonderful books to choose from, and the friends and family who stopped by, it was a party worth staying up for!