Secret Santa
Appeal
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Adolescents and teens in YCS therapeutic
residences may be too old to sit on Santa's knee but they all still wish for
that special holiday gift. The YCS Foundation is requesting gift cards to
department stores such as Wal-Mart and Target.
We are also in need of gift certificates to supermarkets for nearly 300 needy families in our Youth Case Management program in Hudson County.
If you can help, please contact the YCS Foundation at 201-678-1312 or
Ruthie Harper at rharper@ycs.org. |
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News Alert
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Teen at YCS shines on the football field
Record reporter Keith Idec writes about a very special leading rusher on Eastside High's football team.
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Children at TLC model their whimsical new hats and scarves that were made especially for them by
sanofi-aventis volunteers.
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To vote for one of four holiday gifts to be donated to the YCS Holley Center
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The Sky's the Limit!
Jets safety James Ihedigbo shares a Thanksgiving meal and words of
encouragement with teens
Jets special teams'
safety James Ihedigbo rushed from practice to have dinner with 35 teens at a
YCS therapeutic residence in Paterson.
Before digging into a Thanksgiving feast, donated by the Jets player and Whole
Foods, Ihedigbo talked with the teens about his struggles growing up, losing
his father and his secret dream to be in the NFL.
The teens had many
questions for him about the game and what it takes to play professional
football. Ihedigbo said, "They call it practice, but it is really work...When my
friends in college were going away on spring break, I was sprinting up and down
the steps of the stadium."
When Ihedigbo was a
senior in high school, his father unexpectedly passed away from kidney failure.
His coaches didn't really have confidence in his abilities and his father, whom
he had always depended upon for advice, was no longer there to counsel
him. Ihedigbo encouraged the youth to
believe in themselves. "Don't let anyone set boundaries for you."
 When asked what he
learned most from the visit, one young man said, "He told us the sky's the
limit...I like that."
At the end of the
dinner, Ihedigbo surprised the teens with a gift of tickets to a Jets game on Thanksgiving weekend.
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YCS Nurse Family Partnership
hailed as national model
Rebekah Baskerville, administrator of the YCS Nurse Family Partnership
(NFP) program, was part of a small group of NFP nurses from the tri-state area
selected to attend a two-day event hosted by the NFP national board of directors.
They were chosen because their programs were identified as national models of
excellence. According to Baskerville,
the YCS Essex County
program is currently serving 100 clients and 74 babies. Baskerville and
colleagues from Middlesex County met with U.S. senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert
Menendez to discuss their programs and the needs of their clients.
"NFP currently serves more than 16,000 families in 28 states...It is
a true honor to be hailed as one of the most successful programs and nationwide
model," said Richard Mingoia, YCS President/CEO.
Ken Berger, president of Charity Navigator, sited NFP as one of
the most reputable charities to support because of the evidence based data that
indicates meaningful results in the lives of the first time mothers and babies
being served by the program.
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| If you
don't have a smile,
I'll give you one of mine."
~ Anonymous
As you
look forward
to
spending the holidays with family and friends,
There are
countless YCS children
who do not
have much to smile about.
But you
can change that...
You can give a YCS child
a reason to smile.
Your gift
to YCS will put a smile on a child's face
And fill
their holiday...with hope.
Thank you!
To find out how you can donate, please click here
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Herb Ouida
named Executive Director
of Bergen Volunteer Medical Initiative
Herb Ouida, a
member of the YCS, Inc. Board of Trustees, has recently taken the helm of a new
initiative to provide free primary medical care to working poor
residents of Bergen
County.
According to the BVMI website, the targeted
population is "the hard-working individuals and families who do not have and
cannot afford health insurance or healthcare...[currently] there are more than 85,000 individuals who have neither Medicare,
Medicaid, Veterans' nor private insurance."
If you would like more information about this program, please visit www.bvmi.org |
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| The YCS Central Region Advisory Council
is back into action
After a brief hiatus, the Central Region Advisory Council (CRAC) has
regrouped and has begun working to improve the lives of children in YCS
programs in the central counties of the state.
"The
(CRAC )is ready to go! We are very
fortunate to have many new members joining forces with our long time volunteers
to create a dynamic new council," said Robin Peck, YCS Foundation co executive
director.
The CRAC's mission is..."to improve the
lives of the children under the care of YCS. By leveraging our collective
talents and energy, we will seek to make possible - - by raising and deploying
money and other required resources -- a select number of projects that
are important to achieving this goal, but would otherwise be beyond the means
of YCS to accomplish."
Council members are Sarah Clark, Chuck DiPietro, Karen Feldman, Alex Koladziej,
Keyana Laws, Kea Morgan, Guy Prandstatter, Sharon Reddin, Brian Saltzman, Alan
Schwartz, Terri Seeney and Jennifer Spitz.
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