Care to Cure - This is What's Right With America's Youth!

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Many people decry that America's youth are a mess, or something similar. Sadly, there is often evidence to support that contention. However, what doesn't get press are the stories of today's youth that give you hope that America's future is still bright. I received an email from Elena Lyustina, and I'm really glad I did. Elena is going to school at UC Davis, and she told me about an organization that she founded called CARE-TO-CURE Childhood Cancer Awareness Organization.

After speaking to Elena, I realized two things. First, America's youth will keep the dream alive just fine. Secondly, I want to help Elena. Below is Elena's story. Please take the time to read her information, and, if you are looking for a charity to "pay it forward to", please consider Care to Cure - they are helping St. Judes Hospital and making me proud to be an American. I have also included the link to Elena's You-Tube Video as well.

As an intern in the Child Life ward at the University of California, Davis Medical Center, I was given the opportunity to work closely with many patients. In particular, I grew extremely close with a nine year old girl who was getting her gallbladder removed. After countless weeks of visiting her in the hospital, I came to my internship knowing that her surgery was completed and she was already sent home. To my surprise, I saw her name on the patient list and I quickly walked over to her room. As I approached her room, I heard a young girl screaming in pain and there she was pressing the morphine button as tears rolled down her face. I quickly learned that she was diagnosed with a terminal cancer that had already eaten away at her kidney. A week later, she was sent home because the cancer was untreatable. Over 12,400 children, in the United States alone, are affected by cancer and over 4,000 children die of cancer each year. That means that 11 children die of cancer every single day. Childhood cancer is unbiased. It deteriorates the lives of children from various backgrounds and different age groups. It steals childhoods from children who were one day healthy enough to run around on playgrounds or play basketball with their friends. It forces them into hospitals, to loose their hair due to chemotherapy, and loosens the friendships they once made with friends. After learning the detrimental affects of childhood cancer, I founded CARE-TO-CURE at the University of California, Davis.

CARE TO CURE is the only student organization at UC Davis that is aimed at fighting against childhood cancer. We raise funds for children afflicted by cancer, spread community and campus awareness, and bring hope to these children and their families. We organize fundraisers, campus events, and create personal relationships with these children and their families by visiting them at different facilities. CARE-TO-CURE is affiliated with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and is leading the Up 'till Dawn Project on the University of California, Davis campus. Up 'till Dawn is a student run and student led philanthropic program that unites students from all walks of campus life, staff, and the Davis community with the goal to end childhood cancer once and for all. Students help raise awareness and support for St. Jude Children's Research hospital through a variety of activities.

At the end of the program campuses host an all-night Finale Event and literately stay Up 'till Dawn. Students give up a night of sleep in honor of the patients at St. Jude who bravely fight cancer. We celebrate our efforts for St. Jude and, at dawn, find out much our campus raised to advance the mission of finding cures and saving children, so that patients can grow up and go to college, too.CARE-TO-CURE is also sponsored by Caprii Media, http://www.capriimedia.com/ , an online marketing and web design company. Caprii Media has donated our brand new website, http://www.care-to-cure.com/ , which is currently under construction, and a marketing campaign, as well as funds for our upcoming events. To show an appreciation for the unbinding dedication provided by our sponsors, CARE TO CURE will dedicate a portion of our events to thank our sponsors, feature them on the home page of our website, and incorporate their name and logo on all of our brochures, fliers, and posters. Our sponsors are always welcome to discuss their venues at our events and if they are not available to make it, CARE TO CURE will be able to promote their organization for them! The events, fundraisers, and outreach programs CARE-TO-CURE wishes to accomplish cannot be done without the support and dedication of our sponsors that understand the importance in finding a cure for childhood cancer. CARE-TO-CURE is determined to raise funds to find a cure for childhood cancer, spread community and campus awareness, and bring hope to these children and their families. Please join us in the fight against childhood cancer.

For more information about Care to Cure, please contact Elena at:CARETOCURE@gmail.com while their site is under construction (thanks for Capri Media too).

Please join Agentspayingforward.com, and, if you do, please consider Care-to-Cure as one of the charities to support. It's free for both agents and charities to join. Next week, I'll tell you how one donation led to an agent getting access to a huge non-profit's database for advertising. For now, I'm off to , with a bunch of guys who went to UCLA a long time ago!

AHAN Joins AgentsPayingForward.com

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It's always fun to announce a new advertiser, but it's even better when you can announce an advertiser that is doing particularly great things: AHAN is just such a case. AHAN stand for "Asians For Humans, Animals, and Nature". Below is the summary of what AHAN does:

Asians for Humans, Animals and Nature is a 5013(c)non-profit organization dedicated to educating the public on animal and environmental welfare. One of our goals is to find forever loving homes for every neglected, abused adoptable animal we take in domestically and internationally. Whenever possible, we also help other organizations or rescuers with their adoption programs by providing foster care and posting available animals on our website. Your contribution makes a difference for our abandoned dogs!

For more information about AHAN go to their website, or email them at ahanintl@sbcglobal.net.

Sacramento Breast Cancer Resource Center

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Many people have been affected by the ravages of cancer. I was speaking with a friend of mine, Danielle, and we were talking about how her Mom beat breast cancer. However, now her Aunt has breast cancer as well. Breast cancer is a pervasive disease, and seems to be getting worse.

I had the privilege of meeting with Gina Andrews, and Gina is a breast cancer survivor. What's most amazing is that Gina was diagnosed when she was 29 when the cancer was diagnosed! I often like to use the phrase: "fight or die". Gina just did that, but she went one step further. Gina started Sacramento Breast Cancer Resource Center, which is a non-profit designed to "foster hope and inspiration among women facing breast cancer".

Please take a moment to read Gina's story below, and, if you are an agent looking for a non-profit to pay it forward to, please support Gina Andrews and the Sacramento Breast Cancer Resource Center. Gina turned a negative experience like breast cancer into a positive - the positive is called the Sacramento Breast cancer Resource Center:

Breast Cancer is not hereditary, racial, or age specific. It does not discriminate on any of these things. Before my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer I believed that Asian people were less at risk for it. Then when I was 29 I thought there was no way this lump is cancer, “I’m too young for cancer.” The first thing people ask me when I tell them I’m a breast cancer survivor is “ did someone in your family have it”…and then when I say yes my mom is a 12 year survivor “oh I see”, as if the reason why I got cancer is because it’s a family disease.

There are many young women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer that have no family history. And though this is not an accurate description of the world, the young survivor support group I attend averages 10 attendees and 4 of those are Asian. The reality is that cancer is none of these myths. It is completely nondiscriminatory. It can and will attack anyone regardless of family history, age, or ethnicity.

According to the American Cancer Society, only about 5% to 10% of all cancers are the inherited type. And according to the National Cancer Institute one in every 229 women between the ages of 30 and 39 will be diagnosed with breast cancer within the next 10 years. My mother and I both had cancer. My mom was diagnosed at the age of 47 and I was diagnosed at the age of 29. Both of us were diagnosed at early ages but the cancers we had were completely different, and I tested negative for the BRCA, the only known cancer gene.

These myths of breast cancer need to be changed. Because people believe they are not at high risk for breast cancer, they are disregarding the lumps they find in their breast. As a result of this disregard the disease can be found at a later and more deadly stage.

Gina's organization is having a fundraiser here in Sacramento tonight at 7:30 at the "Lounge on 20", click here for more info. If you are an agent or a charity, please join Agentspayingforward.com. There are many great causes that I want to help, so please feel free to contact me at tomash@surewest.net. I'll be happy to include your information in this blog. We are a community, and we all need to work together to help great people do great work.

Presentation in how I started Agents Paying Forward

Les Turner ALS Foundation Joins AgentspayingForward.com

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I like telling people when a new charity joins our site, so that you can get a sense of who we are trying to support. Our mission is to help non-profits, schools, and churches. The aforementioned groups do great things, and The Les Turner ALS Foundation is certainly an organization that deserves help. I am proud to have this organization as one of the charities to support, and also proud to be associated with both Mark and Laura Anderson.

I also like having the agents that are on the site write about why they are paying it forward for their particular charity. Many people say their real estate agent is this or that, but I challenge you to tell me you think Mark Anderson of Keller Williams is not a remarkable man. His story is below, and tells why he wants to pay it forward for the Les Turner ALS Foundation. More than that, Mark shows how many American's can turn a negative into a positive. Fighting to find a cure for ALS is personal for Mark - it's not just business. Please take the time to read Mark's information below, and also to help Mark and the Les Turner ALS Foundation find a cure for ALS.

ALS stands for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. This neuromuscular disease currently has no cure, with those afflicted losing their lives 3 to 5 years following a confirmed diagnosis.
Major limbs, either both arms or both legs are the first to be affected; in my mom's case, the legs. A short time later, the strength in her arms vanished, and soon thereafter she was bedridden for the remainder of her life. Mom's condition was very rapid, though there are known cases where the progression of the disease is much slower, yet no less insidious. Such is the case with professor Stephen Hawking, the well known scientist and author.

Statistically ALS is well down the list among fatal illnesses. It's comparative rarity, combined with the lack of test subjects (most die too quickly) means little has been done to isolate the possible cause and develop an effective treatment. Most ALS sufferers lose complete motorneuron activity, while maintaining complete cognitive ability, which makes this disease almost too horrible for most people to contemplate. In my mom's case however, I think the spread of the disease affected the frontal and temporal lobes of her brain, which has been a reported event in some, but not all patients. This phenomenon made it seem like she was losing her mind, and her frequent rants created additional stress, affecting all those who were charged with her care.
So little is known about ALS that it is identified only after all possible diseases are eliminated from consideration. Imagine hoping to be spared your worst fear by receiving news a lesser disease with a more comforting, treatable "label" attached to it, only to be told all other possibilities have been tested for and discarded. That death will come to you as lie immobile with only the ability to move your eyes, with your brain fully aware that your lungs can no longer expel the inevitable buildup of fluid. All ALS deaths are respiratory, unless in cases of a fall, or some other means not related to the illness.Usually, the cause of death is stated as pneumonia.
ALS usually affects males over forty years of age. Race geographic location, and lifestyle are irrelevant. Generally speaking, the disease is very random, though my mom had what's known as a familial strain of the disease.
Two of her brothers had died previous to her own death, a fact her physician found very interesting, though of course nothing could be done to affect the outcome. Research seemed to suggest ALS may "skip" a generation, however this is not true. Subsequent to my mom's death, a first cousin, and the son of yet another of my mom's brothers was determined to have ALS. He died at age 49, after approximately one year of living with the illness.

Mark closed out his note to me with the following words: "ALS is an affliction that is truly the stuff of all our nightmares. This is a bad one...I cannot imagine a worse hand to be dealt.". If you are looking to buy or sell real esate in Minnesota, please consider working with Mark and Laura Anderson with Keller Williams. Your working with the Anderson's will help the Les Turner ALS Foundation fight a horrible disease. You can reach Mark and Laura Anderson at (651) 307-4020 or (651) 428-4996.

WEAVE Joins Agentspayingforward.com

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One of the newest agents on Agentspayingforward is a Realtor named Tom Conway. Tom is with Keller Williams in their Folsom office (916) 257-4864. Rather than just join Agentspayingforward, Tom also went and recruited his favorite charity: WEAVE. WEAVE is the primary provider of crisis intervention services for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault in Sacramento County. Below is a description from their website.

WEAVE provides crisis intervention services to women, men and children in Sacramento County who have experienced domestic violence or have been sexually assaulted. It is WEAVE's mission to bring an end to domestic violence and sexual assault in partnership with our community.

Agentspayingforward.com is dedicated to helping great organizations like WEAVE, and Agentspayingforward.com is made up of people like Tom Conway who care about more than just making money - they care about their community. Join Agentspayingforward.com, or work with those who are part of it: you can help change the world one transaction at a time!

WEAVE Joined Agentspayingforward.com

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There are a number of great organizations that are part of Agentspayingforward.com, but a new one just joined today. The new charity is called WEAVE. WEAVE is here in the Sacramento area, and their mission statement reads:

WEAVE provides crisis intervention services to women, men and children in Sacramento County who have experienced domestic violence or have been sexually assaulted. It is WEAVE's mission to bring an end to domestic violence and sexual assault in partnership with our community provides crisis intervention services to women, men and children in Sacramento County who have experienced domestic violence or have been sexually assaulted. It is WEAVE's mission to bring an end to domestic violence and sexual assault in partnership with our community.

Tom Conway is a Realtor here in the Sacramento area for Keller Williams, and is the one who went to WEAVE in order to get them to join. I applaud Tom for going to the effort (being "of service"), and bringing WEAVE to Agentspayingforward.com. If you are an agent looking for a charity to support, you might consider WEAVE. If you are looking for a real estate agent who supports WEAVE, please contact Tom Conway (tom@tomandgwen.com or (916) 257-

Agents Paying Forward - The Concept behind

http://agentspayingforward.com

The agents on this site have pledged to make a difference in the world and you can too. Welcome to Agents Paying Forward, a FREE site developed for agents who want to "pay it forward" to their designated charities and help support the communities in which they serve.

Each agent featured on this website has elected to contribute to one of the many worthy charitable organizations listed on this site. Every transaction an agent closes will generate a donation to his or her preferred charity. The more business the agent does, the more the charity receives - it's that simple.

Changing the world may seem heroic, but leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and many others have demonstrated that one person can make a huge difference: think of what many agents can do collectively!

Attention Consumers - the agents on this site have pledged to make a difference in the world. By working with the agents on the site, you can do your part and make a difference. Help a charity by working with one of these agents! Paying it forward helps so many needy and deserving groups, at no cost to you.