The good guys thread

[kuhio98]

Pillowcase Dresses http://www.littledressesforafrica.org/blog/

Changing lives one little dress at a time…
Little Dresses for Africa is a non-profit 501c3, Christian organization, which provides relief to the children of Africa. Simple dresses are made out of pillow cases, and distributed through the orphanages, churches and schools in Africa to plant in the hearts of little girls that they are worthy!

Knowing the history of the girls in Africa and the difficult road that lay ahead, Rachel O’Neill decided she would take some dresses to the children in the villages. A small group of ladies began to sew simple little dresses, made out of pillowcases, to be distributed to young girls through the orphanages in Africa.

WHY PILLOWCASES? The pillowcase pattern has been around since the pioneer days and is easy enough for even a novice seamstress. Pillowcases are available in so many colors and patterns. They already have the hem and sides in them and are often sitting unused on shelves in closets all across the country. With just a little help they can be turned into bright little sundresses, perfectly suited for the African climate. Pillowcase dresses are only a suggestion. Any simple pattern is great to use.

This ministry captures the hearts of so many and continues to grow as groups of all sizes spring up across America. These groups cross age, gender and denominational lines, to serve the most vulnerable of God’s children: little girls. To date we have received well over 2.5 MILLION LITTLE DRESSES and donations from all 50 states across the USA as well as from the UK, Ireland, Canada, Mexico and Australia. 2.5 MILLION! That’s a lot of little girls!! With your help these beautiful dresses have been distributed in 47 countries of Africa! We are happy to partner with mission teams and travelers to get these dresses to the children who need them most. One generous supporter, Nancy’s Notions, has sent over 100,000 to us. We are so grateful. Dresses have also been sent to other countries in crisis such as Honduras, Guatemala, Thailand, The Dominican, The Philippines, Cambodia, Mexico and thousands and thousands to Haiti. In addition, we have sent dresses to children in need right here in the United States, in the Appalachian Mountains and South Dakota. But more importantly than how many have been shipped, are the lives that they have touched as these little dresses go out as little Ambassadors in the name of Jesus, to give hope to the children that receive them.

HOW TO HELP: With Little Dresses for Africa there are many ways to provide help…from starting or hosting your own sewing group, sizing and packing little dresses, or donating financially toward shipping costs. To ensure that they actually get to the children, the majority of our dresses are sent with mission teams here in the United States, as they travel on their missions, for personal distribution. We are happy to mail them to your teams to take in your extra bags for distribution. Please have your team contact us. We also mail them internationally. Little Dresses for Africa hosts a team once a year to deliver the little dresses personally to the grateful and excited little girls that need them so desperately.

Remember, the job is not complete until these little dresses are actually on the the little girls that need them. Please enclose your tax-deductible donation to help with shipping whenever possible. It costs an average of $2.00/dress to get the dresses to the children. Although it is not required, any amount you can send help. Thank you in advance for your help! Check the gallery for pictures! Due to the amazing response, we can’t promise specific pictures, but maybe your little dress will turn up in a picture on a precious little girl!

Simple patterns are downloadable below, or feel free to use your own pattern, if you prefer.

“We’re not just sending dresses, we’re sending HOPE!”
Click here for pillow case dress directions
Free boys shorts download available: http://www.nancyzieman.com/blog/nanc...oys-in-africa/

To confirm your dresses were received,
please include a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Thank you so much for your help!
Any simple pattern is great! Zikomo! Finished items and financial donations for shipping can be sent to:

24614 Curtis Drive, Brownstown, MI 48134

or donate on line

Making a difference, here and across the ocean, one little dress at a time!

[kuhio98]

Man tracks down family who left home videos of newborn baby in Goodwill camera

A perfect storm of old-fashioned sentimentality and new media fervor created a little miracle this week.

A Kentucky dad who bought an old video camera at a thrift store was just planning to revisit his own family’s memories, using the outdated gadget to play his old videotapes.

But inside the camera bag’s pocket, he found hours of footage of another family’s milestones – a little boy meeting his newborn brother for the first time, parents and kids carving pumpkins and the family on vacation. He could have just taped over those memories; but, then again, he couldn’t.

Instead, U.S. Army Sergeant Joseph Lynch made still pictures from the tapes, posted them on Facebook and Twitter, and shared them with local television news outlets. Reporter Scott Adkins of Wave 3 News did a story about the find. Within a few days, the adorable images went viral, and before the week was up, the family Lynch saw in those videos was at his doorstep to reclaim them.

“To be honest with you, I didn't do anything special,” Lynch told TODAY.com. “Anybody would have done that — I think so. If anyone saw pictures of a woman with her child for the first time, they would have done it. I think most people are good like that.”’

Phillip and Stephanie Humphrey had no idea that their videos were missing until a relative texted them to say images of their family were going viral on the Internet.

“It was a shock, needless to say, to see those out online,” Phillip Humphrey said. “It’s kind of surreal, the whole fact that we’re something people have gravitated toward.”

Humphrey said he gave the old RCA camera to his brother-in-law Kit Applegate more than seven years ago because he had another one that used the same sort of tapes. Applegate told Wave 3 News he barely used the camera and so he donated it to Goodwill in Clarksville, Indiana.

That’s where Lynch bought the old clunker for five bucks.

Lynch credited his wife, Geneva, with pushing him do the right thing. “My wife saw it and said, ‘There’s no way someone would give something like that away to Goodwill.’”

It turned out to be true: The Humphreys never wanted to let those memories go. They just forgot to check the camera bag’s pocket before they gave it away. They wanted those memories back so badly that on Saturday, they piled into their minivan with their four kids and drove more than four hours from DeMotte, Indiana to the Lynches in Louisville, Kentucky.

“I just feel very fortunate,” Phillip Humphrey told TODAY.com. “Really, we were very grateful to be able to go across two states and go pick those up from Joe and thank him.”

Now the family is viewing all sorts of old footage from years gone by, and Humphrey said his kids, Cooper, 12, Greyson, 10, Ella, 6, and Everly, 17 months, love the home movies. The rediscovered tapes let the two younger girls see their older brothers as little boys for the first time. Humphrey said he plans to get a new video camera and make some more memories.

[kuhio98]

BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (WCCO) – At age 62, retired and blind, David Kuhn isn’t your average long distance runner.

But he’s averaging about 20 miles each day as he crisscrosses the country promoting a cause, in hopes of finding a cure.

On Monday, Kuhn’s nationwide running campaign brought him to the Twin Cities, where he will promote an effort to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

“I’m running around the perimeter states of the United States, approximately 11,000 miles for my granddaughter who has cystic fibrosis. She’s 12-years-old,” Kuhn said.

Last May, he set out on a journey he calls “It’s All I Can Do.” It is an effort to raise both money and awareness in the battle to find a cure for the crippling lung disease.

What’s so incredible is that Kuhn is challenged by his own blindness. He says his one good eye is like peering through waxed paper. That’s why he prefers running with a partner or, at the very least, on high school tracks, like the one at Champlin-Park High School.

“I’m fear driven and I want to do everything I can do for my granddaughter, to extend her life and of those who are struck with this disease,” he said.

Kuhn wears a runner’s GPS watch to track his miles. Since his mission began back in May in Seattle, he’s already logged more than 1,400 miles.

“My Garmin keeps track of my miles and as far as the track I keep focused on the white lines,” he said.

Step by step, lap after lap, Kuhn says what he’s tackling is nothing when compared to the suffocating struggles of Cystic Fibrosis patients like his granddaughter, Kylie.

“My pain, my suffering, my struggling is nothing compared to those,” Kuhn said.

His goal is to raise $500,000 in the next 18 months.

[kuhio98]

Pit Bull and Chihuahua Pals Find a New Home

Happy Days are here for Chachi, the long-haired Chihuahua, and his pal Joanie, the Pit Bull mix.

Yesterday we told you about how Joanie was found carrying Chachi, who had a severe eye infection, in a Georgia neighborhood earlier this month. Offers to adopt the two poured in from around the world to Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Animal Control.

Officer Christina Sutherin, who rescued the pair, chose an unnamed new owner in Florida to take them in. The police department says the dogs were "elated" with the news, smothering Sutherin with affection when she told them. Plans are being made to transport them south to their new home next month.

[kuhio98]

Joseph Carbone Gives Glasses to Thousands of Struggling Kids

Joseph Carbone can still picture the Navajo teen in his office, trying on his first pair of eyeglasses, paid for by a benefactor.

"Wow," the boy told him, laughing and crying at the same time as he looked out the window. "I didn't know that trees had leaves."

It was on that day in 2001, says Carbone of West Bountiful, Utah, that he knew he should close his optician business and start giving away glasses to children in need.

"That kid touched my heart," he says. "He literally changed my life overnight."

Taking out a second mortgage on his home and lining up donated services, Carbone, 61, built EyeCare4Kids into a full-time nonprofit in 2006.

Today, with a clinic in Midvale, Utah, and two school-based units in Las Vegas funded by casino magnate Steve Wynn, Carbone and his 11-person staff have provided free exams and frames to more than 75,000 kids.

"The need is so great, somewhere around one in three or one in four American kids need glasses, but their parents can't afford them," says Carbone. "If kids can't see what the teacher is writing on the blackboard in school, they give up and drop out. A single pair of glasses can change everything."

Carbone struggled with his own eyesight as a child growing up in Queens until his parents finally saved enough to buy him a pair of glasses when he was 17. He knows firsthand the struggles that families like Wayne Urcino's face.

"Joseph is a godsend," says Urcino, who has a family of five. "Every person in my family needed glasses, but insurance wouldn't cover them and we couldn't afford them. Now for the first time in years, we can all see how beautiful the world is."

Ultimately, Carbone hopes to help a million children see more clearly.

"That's the dream," he says. "I'd love to be able to give glasses to every kid who needs them nationally and internationally. There's nothing like giving somebody the gift of sight. I plan to keep at this until the day I die."

[kuhio98]

Jackie Bobcean Provides Handbags and Personal Necessities to Abused Women

Growing up in suburban Detroit, Jackie Bobcean watched her alcoholic father, a police officer, unleash his rage on her mother and younger brother nearly every day.

"More than a dozen times, I recall hiding my brother in the closet and trying to stop my dad from choking my mom," says Bobcean, 50, a former teacher's aide.

"I was the only one in the family who stood up to him," she says.

When her brother Billy, who had a learning disability, committed suicide on Christmas Eve 2003 after decades of their father's verbal abuse, Bobcean, a married mom of two, decided that was the final straw.

"I knew I needed to do something to help stop the cycle of domestic violence," she says.

So in 2006, she launched HandBags of Hope out of her Eastpointe, Mich., home. The nonprofit collects gently used handbags and purses for women who've fled an abusive relationship, often with only the clothes on their backs and their children in tow.

Run purely on donations, Bobcean and 20 volunteers fill the handbags with daily necessities like makeup, hair brushes, manicure sets, pens, calendars, pocket tissues, but most importantly, handwritten messages of support ("You are loved," "God bless your journey").

"It's our small way of letting a woman know she did the right thing by standing up for herself," explains Bobcean, who says the organization has so far given away 17,000 handbags and counting. (No one in the organization, including Bobcean, gets paid.)

"For many survivors who arrive at our shelter," says Jan Mancinelli, executive director of the Women's Resource Center of Northern Michigan, "these handbags help give them everything they need to face another day."

Some of the volunteers – who, like Bobcean, are abuse survivors – go a step further, writing lengthy letters to be tucked inside a handbag with their phone number in case the recipient wants to reach out.

"A woman once told me she kept one of our notes in her purse as a reminder that there was a little bit of love inside," Bobcean adds. "And that was all she needed to keep going."

[kuhio98]

Six Children Save the Life of an Injured Stray Dog

When Jadiel, Fernanda, Francisco, Montserrat, Saúl and Juanito, found an injured puppy in their town, Valle del Puebla, Mexicali, Mexico, they knew just what to do. They picked up the dog – that had a mangled rear leg – cared for him, and turned to adults for help. However, they didn’t turn to their parents for help. No, they called a local radio program, Radiopatrulla, and asked for help.

The children ranging in ages from five-years-old to 12-years-old, are constant listeners of the radio program, and somehow they felt that by calling in to their favorite show, they would get the help the three-month-old puppy needed.

They were right. When the radio team learned what these innocent children and future animal rescuers did, they agreed to help the children by picking up the dog and transporting him to an animal clinic.

Veterinarian Juan Carlos Acosta performed emergency surgery to amputate the mangled leg because it couldn’t be saved. However, what worried him the most, was the many different bacterial infections the small canine was fighting and the tick and flea infestation he had.

After hearing how the children heroically rescued the injured dog, Dr. Acosta decided to offer his services at no cost.

The puppy named by the children as “Radiopatrulla,” after their favorite radio show, was bathed after the surgery and started on treatment for fleas, ticks, and bacterial infections. Dr. Acosta expects the dog to make a full recovery.

The puppy was then returned to his five young saviors who are taking turns, nursing him and making sure he grows up to be a strong and loved pet.