The kids at the New Direction youth center with Brett Ellen (Kids Finance Coach)
Dear Brett and Denise (Kids Finance Coach.com)
THANK YOU SO MUCH for your wonderful presentation yesterday at New Directions for Youth! I was at our facility this morning and there is still and excited “buzz” in the building left over from your fun and informative event. Our kids were thrilled and shocked to receive such generous gifts from you. Not only did they learn a lot about finance and saving, investing, spending and donating (you see…I was listening), you made them feel very special. We all know that you don’t have to volunteer your time and energy they way you do. We so appreciate your kindness, generosity and desire to educate our youth. Not only are you wonderful role models for your own children, you are generous in spirit to other’s children, as well. I will send you photos in the mail as soon as I print them! I look forward to working together with you to make this world a better place for our youth. Thank you, again. Your amazing presentation will be remembered by all of us here at New Directions for Youth. I am privileged and honored to know both of you. Fondly, Patti Jo Wolfson
On May 3, 2012 Turn Kindness On and Kids Finance Coach paid a visit to the New
Directions for Youth Center in Hollywood. The kids learned the basics of finance and Brett Ellen the Kids finance coach offered prizes, gift cards, movie tickets, an autographed Kareem Abdul Jabbar book and an iPod Nano and speaker set to the kids that answered the questions and participated in the presentation. A great event for all involved. Keanu and Tristen Ellen from Turn Kindness On also helped with the presentation. Great job guys!
Kindness On the Go! In February 2012, Kindness Ambassador-ettes Carole & Jacky volunteered and trotted alongside a penguin colony on the Island of Magdelana, located in south Chile.
*Do you have pictures and experiences you’d like to share with your fellow TKO ambassadors?? Send us your story, pictures, and videos to jeff@turnkindnesson.org
The LA Kings have donated 4 lower bowl seats for the Mar. 22nd Kings game as well as a Kings experience. The experience is to have up to 6 people in the penalty box during the games warm up period.
Tickets to win this fabulous prize: $5 each and the drawing will be held on March 18th. Call 818 264-4981 to purchase your tickets . All we need is your name, email and phone number.
On Saturday February 25th, TKO will have 40 volunteers at LA Live and the Staples center collecting donations and selling raffle tickets for TKO. Please keep an eye out for our TKO volunteers, bring your loose change and small bills and help send a military child to summer camp. You can make a difference.
TKO and over 120 volunteers gathered from 7 am-5 pm for two days to transform a playroom for the disabled children and their families at Carousel ranch. www.carouselranch.org is a horse therapy ranch that offers life changing programs that connect children and adults who have physical or mental disabilities with caring volunteers and specially trained horses.
Christina, a 17 year old girl scout who was on a mission to earn her gold badge used her determination, hard work and talent to renovate a storage room into a beautiful play room. The new playroom, complete with big screen tv, playstation 3, poker table, foosball table and more will entertain the families while they are waiting for their children in therapy. When TKO found out that Christina was working on this worthy cause, we were excited to join her. Our volunteer team went into action by building a handicap ramp, getting donations from American Financial Network, Galpin Ford, Farmer John’s, Costco, Trader Joe’s, United Airlines, Julia Wong designs, Western Bagels, and over a hundred children and parents. Ron Gause from Gause Painting donated his time and talent to get the best work out of our many volunteers. Generous financial contributions were received from the Fardad, Cooper, Villanueva, Mcintosh, Parra and Lawson families and furniture and toys were donated by our other TKO families.
Becky and Denise from Carousel ranch were touched by the transformation. They were truly appreciative for the hard work that the volunteers gave and theysaid they can’t wait till the families of the children can enjoy the room.
This was one of the largest undertakings that TKO has taken on and it was a huge success. Beautiful 12 year old, Ava Maas sang the Turn Kindness On song for all of the volunteers at the completion of the project and that brought our Kindness mission to a perfect end.
The TKO founding family went back to their roots and visited the streets of Santa Monica this past weekend. Through our non-profit organization, we have dedicated our lives to creating fun philanthropic projects for families to get involved in. There are times when we are so busy making sure that everyone is safe and enjoying the heart warming affects of kindness that we don’t allow ourselves to connect and enjoy the moment. On this beautiful, sunny February day we drove as a family to Santa Monica with over 150 meals. Farmer John’s donated hundreds of hot dogs and sausages for our remodeling event at carousel ranch just 2 days earlier. There we had worked with over 120 volunteers, in 2 days, building a playroom for disabled children. We fed all the volunteers but we still had an abundance of sausages and hamburgers left in our cooler. We decided to share the extras with the homeless people of Santa Monica. We barbecued the sausages and kept them hot and ready to serve. We handed out chips, cold drinks, cupcakes and hot dogs and hamburgers to the many appreciative homeless men and women.
The first woman that was in line said “I am so hungry”. My husband Brett and I looked at each other and instantly smiled as we remembered once again why it is important to not only do these small acts of kindness for others but for ourselves. We have been blessed to have food on our table and enough to share with friends, relatives and strangers. Our children, who have been feeding homeless for the past 12 years handed out much more then food. They interacted, shared a moment of kindness and touched a life that may have been forgotten. We hope that these memories that we make together as a family will stay with them forever. As parents it has been an important part of our lives to instill our values into our children. We offer them so many opportunities in life and one of the most important lesson that we offer is to value the life of others and to always help those in need.
We will be feeding homeless again next month and hope that you can join us, we just needed one for our family to reconnect and Turn Kindness On.
