Turn Bad News into Good News

In my blog today I posted a link to a letter to the editor, titled "Their Blood is on Our Hands" - Rev. Meeks, written by Rev. James Meeks, pastor of Salem Baptist Church, and an Illinois State Senator. This is a powerful call to action.

Each week at Cabrini Connections we have volunteers connecting with inner city kids, with the goal that our kids stay in school and move to jobs and careers, with our help, and don't end up as the subject of one of these bad news stories.

We can't do this without help from donors. We've had many people step forward, but we're far short of our annual budget, and the money we will need next year to keep providing our services.

There are many ways to give and we describe them here.

One campaign that's going on right now is a competition to see if alumni and friends of Northwestern can raise more money for Cabrini Connections, Tutor/Mentor Connection than can alumni and friends of Illinois.

As of 11/5, NU has$925 points (dollars) raised.

You can donate to the NU team at http://www.giveforward.org/illinivsnuchallenge/

As of 11/5, Illinois has $740 points (dollars). Help the Illinois team at http://www.giveforward.org/illinialumsgive/



You can also sign up to attend the Holiday Wine-Tasting Fundraiser from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 22, at Cellar Rat, 1811 W. North Ave. Even if you can't attend, you might make a Thanksgiving donation to this event and start celebrating your holidays early. See more at http://www.giveforward.org/ccwinetasting/

We started putting events on the GiveForward site in late August, and already we've raised over $61,000. This site enables anyone to launch a fund raising campaign, celebrating a birthday, a holiday, a run in a marathon, etc.

We hope more and more of our volunteers, and friends, will do this, helping us build a much larger network of support to keep kids headed toward a positive future instead of a newspaper headline.