ReBAG, and Remind Your Friends!

Whole Foods Market has launched a bag recycling program and during April, May and June, the charity that benefits from customer recycling at five Chicago stores is CABRINI CONNECTIONS.

Bring your bags back when you shop, and you can have 10 cents per bag donated to support our work. Now I've told everyone for years that I would stand on my head, or do anything else, to help find the money needed to assure that Cabrini Connections can continue to connect kids and volunteers.

With this recycling program, you don't need to do that. You just need to tell your friends and co-workers to shop at Whole Foods and ReBag for Cabrini Connections.

This is not only a way to raise some money. It's a way to build a whole network of new supporters for tutoring/mentoring. I was in the Whole Foods store on Canal Street last week. I had some great wings and took home some fresh flowers. It's a huge store! Hundreds of shoppers are going to the cash register and what do they see? The Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection logo.

That's the type of corporate advertising we hope will be duplicated by many companies. Every time someone looks at this we hope they are reminded to go on Google and look up "tutor mentor". When they do, they will find our web sites, and they will find Cabrini Connections.

However, they will also find our new Interactive Program Locator, which will enable customers from each of these stores to shop for what tutor/mentor program in the North, West, or South parts of Chicago they want to support with their time, or dollars.

If you can enlist your faith group, your fraternity, your company, or your sports team to find a way to raise money for Cabrini Connections or other tutor/mentor programs, and point to the Program Locator, each event will complement each other event. In total we'll raise much more attention, and recruit many more volunteers and donors, than we can with each program just promoting their own efforts.

I hope you'll make an extra effort to do this, just as I'm doing. Together we can make sure kids at Cabrini Connections, and kids in other neighborhoods, have tutor/mentor programs as we go into the 2009-10 school year.