Did you know that daily an average of 13 children are diagnosed with a brain or central nervous system tumor? Or that brain tumors take the lives of more children in the United States than any other disease?
Vs. Cancer, a signature fundraising campaign for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation, gives sports teams, athletes and communities the platform to help children with brain tumors and other forms of pediatric cancer. The Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation is the world's leading nonprofit dedicated to the childhood brain tumor community, and for many participating teams in Charlotte, the proceeds from their Vs. Cancer campaign help fund child life programs at Levine Children’s Hospital and lifesaving pediatric brain tumor research.
That's how Alexis Gordon explains why she made a simple yet powerful choice for Digi-Bridge on #GivingTuesdayCLT.
Alexis has always been big on supporting nonprofits, but she's especially drawn to the mission of Digi-Bridge because of her own experiences with tech education. Digi-Bridge aims to equip 21st century learners with opportunities to succeed in the digital age—something that Alexis believes is essential for the next generation.
Too often a short commute to your neighborhood grocery store is taken for granted. In Mecklenburg County, there are 72,793 individuals living in food deserts without convenient or sufficient food access.
A huge hurdle for families embarking on their new lives in Charlotte is simply not knowing how to navigate the ins and outs of daily life. Buying groceries, enrolling children in school or figuring out how to read bills are all monumental tasks. Refugee Support Services was born out of the need to directly help families facing these and other challenges, providing them with support and connection to promote self-sufficiency and ultimately enrich the Charlotte community.
According to Executive Director Rachel Humphries, “We are very centered on bottom-up programming. We tried a top-down approach and it just didn’t resonate with our families.”
Based directly on these needs, Refugee Support Services focuses on five main areas:
Did you know that supporting a nonprofit can be as easy as eating at a restaurant?
It’s true! Last November during #GivingTuesdayCLT, The Abandon Project set up several fundraisers throughout Charlotte to raise funds for their year-round, community empowerment vision in the Wallace Woods neighborhood. Chipotle, City BBQ, and even Kendra Scott Jewelry store, all donated portions of their sales to The Abandon Project leading up the eagerly-anticipated #GivingTuesdayCLT celebration. With the funds raised, The Abandon Project was able to continue pouring into the lives of the kids they serve and building relationships with the community.
27: That's the number of people who traveled together to Uganda ten years ago to serve communities displaced by war.
658: That's the number of bricks the group made in one day for one of their construction projects. It was a record for the most bricks made in one day. It was also a number that stuck with those 27 people as they returned to the U.S., where they pledged to continue serving communities in need.
Just over a month ago, the city of Charlotte united for a celebration of the arts called Charlotte SHOUT!– a festival showcasing the power art has to bring people together. Art provides a method of communication through which people of all cultures and backgrounds can express themselves. At OurBridge for Kids, they take this phenomenon and use it to nurture the children of the refugee and immigrant community in our city.
As the largest refugee resettlement city in North Carolina, Charlotte welcomes over 600 individuals in just one year’s time. What some struggle to recognize is that refugee and immigrant children wrestle with uniquely complex struggles such as family separation, life in refugee camps, cultural shock and language barriers, while at the same time, trying to understand a new culture and new social expectations.
Education doesn’t stop after grade school or college.
Both local nonprofit, Classroom Central, and Charlotte based business, Skillpop, share a particular passion for lifelong learning. This mutual passion for education gave way to a collaboration for GOOD during this past #GivingTuesdayCLT.
Skillpop provides pop-up classes around Charlotte that make learning a new skill social, accessible, and engaging. From learning how to paint abstract floral artwork to the basics of buying a home, Skillpop provides introductory courses that teach you valuable skills while encouraging you to meeting new people in the community.
“I blame Walt Disney. It’s all his fault,” Steve Parker, the founder of FOCHUS says when asked how it all began.
“We (Steve & Susanne Parker) came to Charlotte in 2010 to work with refugees through a ministry called Apartment Life. We moved into a low-income apartment community on Charlotte’s east side, which at the time was ground zero for refugee resettlement in the city. There were five apartments housing Montagnard (pronounced mon TUHN yahrd) refugee families from Vietnam. There were eight kids in those families between grades K-5, and they discovered our Disney movie collection and iPads. Because of that, they started hanging out in our apartment, watching our movies and playing with our technology. And we gradually just fell in love with these kids. So we began to think, ‘What can we do to help them get off to a good start in this country?’”
We have so much great news to share from our nonprofit partners about their amazing work. But, we'd love to hear from you. Let us know if you have stories you'd like to tell and we'll make you a guest blogger!!
#GivingTuesdayCLT. 
