Ron Osborn contacted Create Now! in October 2007.  He is an accomplished writer with credits including "Meet Joe Black" starring Brad Pitt, and Emmy nominations for "The West Wing" and "Moonlighting."

Ron wanted to teach a screenwriting workshop, but as with most of our new volunteers, he didn't know where to teach or how exactly to do it.  Create Now! sent him a list of youth facilities in the northeast part of Los Angeles, close to where he lives.

He decided that it would be exciting to work with high-risk youth who were in detention at Optimist Youth Homes in Eagle Rock.  This facility, founded in 1906, has several group homes for foster youth.  Their main campus houses up to 100 boys who are referred by the Department of Probation because of crimes ranging from truancy to more serious offenses.

Ron says, "I got far more from this workshop than they probably got from me!"

After more than a year of planning and much hard work by many people, Create Now!'s Peace Mural project in the Harbor Gateway community was completed on April 15th.

19 kids participated in the project, led by artist Tait.  "Working with all of these kids was so amazing," Tait says.  "It was intense and inspiring and I'm so proud of the kids and our final outcome.  My experience showed me that the people who teach are the heroes of the day."

To celebrate, Create Now! provided the children with a pizza party that included presenting each of them with a certificate of completion and backpacks filled with books, DVDs and many other gifts from the Tony Hawk Foundation.  The children screamed with delight and were also thrilled to get disposable cameras from the Lomographic Society, paint kits with brushes contributed by Your Stage, Inc. art paper from Strathmore, as well as CD's from Warner Records, candy and stickers. One boy, Javier, kept repeating, "This is the best day of my life!"

The fun continued with the International Cultural Festival a few days later on April 19th. 

 

The Laura Jane Musser Fund was established by the estate of Laura Jane Musser of Little Falls, Minnesota to continue the personal philanthropy which she practiced in her lifetime.  They have given Create Now! a generous donation to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between groups and citizens of different cultural backgrounds through collaborative, cross-cultural projects.  Thanks to the Laura Jane Musser Fund, we were able to present our Peace Mural and the International Cultural Festival for the Harbor Gateway Community on April 19, 2008.

Create Now! couldn't begin to serve the thousands of children we serve each year if it weren't for the generous, ongoing support of our sponsors and supporters. Please take a moment to click on any logo - or visit our sponsors' and supporters' pages at the Create Now! web site to learn more about these fabulous companies.