Students
At 16, Annie Raises Money For Heartworm Prevention & Treatment
The generosity and dedication of young people always inspires me. I received an email the other day from Annie Blumenfeld, a 16 year old from Connecticut, who very obviously has a huge heart for dogs.
It was after watching as her beloved rescue dog, Teddy, had to remain inactive in his crate for several months and endure many vaccinations and x-rays, that Annie did some research and took it upon herself to fight her furry friend’s enemy – 
heartworm disease – head on.
“It broke my heart to see that Teddy could not understand why he was in his situation and that he could not play with any of his friends,” Annie told me. “It was such a painful, expensive and long process that could have been easily avoided with a monthly preventive.
“I discovered more than one million dogs in the United States currently have heartwork disease and 45% are unprotected.”
And with that, Annie founded her own nonprofit called Wags 4 Hope to raise money for the medical needs of animal shelters and raise awareness about heartworm.
The young philanthropist designed her own website and personally did all the legwork involved in gaining 501C-3 status. She writes her own blogs and a monthly pet column
on pet responsibility. At her school, she established a Wags 4 Hope that currently has 40 members who hold fundraising events and collections. And she has painted and sold 300 original dog portraits with 100% of her profits going to animal shelters. Annie just finished a very personal painting of her dog, Teddy, for the new children’s cancer wing of the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota.
“I hope Teddy brings the children lots of hope and laughter,” she told me.
No doubt, Teddy and Annie already have.
If you would like to learn more about Annie’s cause, and even purchase one of her paintings, please visit http://www.wags4hope.org.
About heartworm from Annie’s site:
Heartworm disease is caused by a parasitic worm, Dirofilaria immitis, from mosquitoes. These worms are spread through the bite of a mosquito and produce offspring while living inside the dog. The worms are called “heart worms” because they live in the heart, lungs, and other blood vessels of an infected animal. In the United States, heartworm disease is most common in the South because of the extreme heat in which the mosquitoes thrive in, but they are present and highly populated in all 50 states. Heartworm disease is also present throughout Europe, Australia, Canada, and Africa. Heartworm disease cannot be spread from one dog to another it is only spread by the bite of a mosquito.
Since, heartworm disease treatment is very expensive, and there is a chance that your pet may not survive the treatment, preventatives are a great solution. There are many safe FDA approved products that can be used. All of these products require a veterinarian’s prescription. These preventatives are used monthly and are simple. There is a vast range of different products from liquids, to tablets. The use of preventatives depend on your location and your dog. Some veterinarians use their own holistic remedies. Please talk to your veterinarian about the best way to protect your pet.
Joey Votto Foundation Volunteers Spruce Up Learning Center
When you stop and think about how vital our children are to the future of our community, and how important it is that they have the tools they need to succeed – from an early age, you come to really appreciate the dedicated work of those who devote not just their careers, but their hearts too, to ensure new generations a starting point from which to grow.
Cincinnati Early Learning Centers, Inc. (CELC) is a nationally accredited, non-profit, United Way agency managing six childcare centers throughout Greater Cincinnati, each providing quality child care for children ages three months through eleven years. CELC sites include: Harrison (location of original site – 1980), East Walnut Hills (1983), East End (1995), Downtown/YWCA (2006), Clifton/Future Environments (2010) and The Robert and Adele Schiff Early Learning Center located in Oyler School, Lower Price Hill (2012).
More than 80 kids, ages 18 months to 12 years, attend its Harrison CELC center. With full-day educational programs for the toddlers and pre-schoolers and an after-school program for the older students, it understandably was in need of a fresh face lift.
Enter the Votto Foundation
Cincinnati Reds first baseman Joey Votto created The Joey Votto Foundation to support the healing of service members, veterans and military families affected by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Each month the Foundation invites families to participate in a community volunteer project, providing opportunities for veterans and military families to socialize, network, and connect with each other. Its February project was to help the staff and children at the Harrison CELC enjoy a refreshed-looking center.
The experience gave Votto Foundation volunteers an opportunity to get involved with a project that brought out their inner humanity and fostered camaraderie, and the staff and kids of CELC were given a beautified environment in which to learn.
I’d say that’s a home run effort!
Bethel-Tate School District Receives Grant To Help Students Succeed
I just heard about some great news for students in Bethel. Their Bethel-Tate School District received a $526,000 grant from the Ohio Department of Education recently to give teachers tools that will help them help young people succeed.
One of the goals for the grant is to allow high school students to earn college credits by enrolling in college-level classes in their school.
According to the Cincinnati Enquirer report, Bethel-Tate wants to use the money for:
- Giving teachers advanced college degrees so they can teach high-school students college-level classes.
- Teachers to be trained to better teach technology.
- A learning lab at the high school where teachers can use the Internet to teach students, who can sign on wherever they are.
Santa Maria Community Services Expands Help To Hispanic Families
Santa Maria Community Services, a Cincinnati nonprofit organization serving the west side, has been helping families with various challenges with educational tools and resources to help themselves for 116 years.
photo from Santa Maria Facebook page
Many of those who have benefitted have been of Hispanic heritage, and the need for Santa Maria services has never been greater.
According to the 2010 census, the Hispanic population grew by 4.2 percent in West Price Hill, 12.3 percent in Lower Price Hill and 6.9 percent in East Price Hill. In the 45205 ZIP code, only 24 percent of children under 5 are enrolled in preschool or childcare programs; instead, children of immigrants are more likely to be in the care of family, friends or neighbors.
Santa Maria’s programs help bridge the gap between recent immigrants and important educational and developmental resources. More than 95 percent of the Hispanic families served by the organization’s Promoting Our Preschoolers (POP) enroll their children in preschool and are committed to finding the best schools for their kids.
Now, with a $127,000 grant from The Greater Cincinnati Foundation, Santa Maria will be able to serve an additional 40 Hispanic children, many of whose families have immigrated from Guatemala and live below the poverty line.
The new bilingual home visitor will work with POP and another agency program, Family Child Care Providers Network (FCC), that connect parents and caregivers to preschool and kindergarten programs, early child development resources and ongoing peer support. The home visitor will work specifically with the increasing Spanish-speaking community in Price Hill, an initiative that represents the first organized effort in Cincinnati to reach the Hispanic child-care population.
In 2012, Santa Maria’s POP program served 196 children ages 3-5 and 218 parents and caregivers, comprising white/Caucasian (including Latino), African-American, multicultural and Asian clients. Hispanic children enrolled in the POP program increased their Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning (DIAL) scores by 14 percentile points.
The FCC Providers Network has served 50 providers and 150 children in the past year; 45 of those children also have been involved in a kindergarten-readiness project.
Through home visits, Santa Maria staff members also connect parents and caregivers to resources such as English classes, financial literacy classes and health education.
Cincinnati Volunteer Pete Bushelman Impacts Thousands Through CISE
There are people in this world who generously give of themselves without any want for return. They quietly contribute in ways that touch others in very meaningful ways.
Pete Bushelman is one of those people. Over the past 33 years, he has impacted the lives of thousands of children through is involved with Cincinnati Catholic Inner-City Schools Education Fund (CISE).Single-handedly, he has raised over $2.5 million to give kids from Cincinnati’s urban neighborhoods an excellent education at a CISE school.
Pete has been a member of the CISE Advisory Board since it was formed in 1980 by then Archbishop Joseph Bernardin.
According to Sharon Civitellos, CISE communications coordinator, “Pete is not a figurehead chairperson. On the contrary, he acts as a committee of one and does everything from calling on his raffle ‘customers’ to writing and mailing out thank you cards.”
The first fundraiser undertaken by the CISE Advisory Board was the “Friends of CISE” Raffle. Pete agreed to chair the first Raffle more than 30 years ago and has served in this role ever since.
From late August each year until the day of the Friends of CISE Raffle drawing in December, Pete is on the phone with 800 of his close friends and associates encouraging them to purchase their raffle tickets. Pete’s persistence pays off with more than $120,000 being raised annually for CISE through this one event. Collectively, that amounts to over 1200 raffle tickets sold valued at over $2.5 million!
At over 80 years of age, Pete continues to give his all to making the Friends of CISE Raffle a success. He amazes his colleagues on the CISE Advisory Board with his tenacity and drive to raise funds for the education of children from Cincinnati’s urban neighborhoods. Without Pete’s determined efforts, the future may have been quite different for the young people who received a solid academic and spiritual foundation at the Catholic inner-city schools during the past 33 years and have gone on to college and careers.
Pete’s volunteer work is not limited to CISE. He has dedicated his life to helping others. Any day of the week you might find Pete delivering food to the homeless or a local food pantry, raising funds for one of his other favorite charities, or helping his invalid 
next-door neighbor who has been able to remain in her home thanks to Pete’s care.
Over his lifetime Pete has actively served on over a dozen non-profit boards and continues to look for ways to help those in need.
And Greater Cincinnati is better for all of us because of people like him.
About CISE:
The schools supported by CISE are St. Boniface in Northside, Corryville Catholic, St. Francis Seraph in Over-the-Rhine, St. Francis de Sales in East Walnut Hills, Holy Family in Price Hill, St. Joseph in the West End, St. Lawrence in Price Hill and Resurrection in Price Hill.
To learn more about CISE and how you can help, please visit www.CISEfund.org.
I want to thank Sharon Civitellos for supplying information for this post.
