When 11-year-old Isabella Glazer wanted to find other children also being raised by their grandparents, her Internet search turned up empty. No networking group for kids in her situation existed.

Isabella changed that.

Four years ago, Isabella and her little sister, Gabriella, 10, started Bella’s Group, a nonprofit organization with the purpose of providing parties and a fun environment for children being raised by relatives other than their parents. With an estimated 35,000 children in Broward County living in similar circumstances, these free parties also bring guardians together to share and receive support while the children play. In addition, Bella’s Group now coordinates with other nonprofit groups like ChildNet and Kids in Distress, so they can join in the fun as well.

“I thought I was the only one being raised by my grandparents, but I found out so many were,” Isabella said. “We decided to start a group where we could all have fun.”

Bella’s Group is part of Forever Family, a nonprofit organization devoted to finding children in foster care permanent homes, and because Isabella and Gabriella know how lucky they are to have had their grandparents adopt them, they wanted to do even more. Now, the girls also make Bella’s Bags to give out to foster children. The bags contain essentials like toothbrushes and toothpaste and goodies like teddy bears, coloring books and crayons.

“It feels good to help because other people get to experience all these good things we get to experience,” Gabriella said.

“People at ChildNet said the kids were really happy,” Isabella added.

To date, Bella’s Group has donated 100 bags to children in foster care. They receive donations from people in the community, and the girls said a club at Nativity Catholic School in Hollywood – the school the girls have attended since pre-school – help decorate the bags for the children. Gabriella and Isabella also recently donated back-to-school backpacks to children at Kids in Distress, and they encourage children and adults to donate canned goods to the Pantry of Broward, a program devoted to feeding seniors.

“I’m so proud of them,” said Marietta Glazer, who along with her husband, Ira, adopted Isabella and Gabriella after a lengthy process two years ago. “They get an awful lot out of what they’re doing.”

The nonprofit organization hosts four free parties a year, ranging in location from animal shelters where the kids can play with puppies to bowling alleys and swimming pools, and while the children interact and play, Marietta said they offer information for the guardians regarding legal aid, nutritional classes and preventing abuse. The last party Bella’s Group hosted attracted more than 100 people, and the group recently partnered with the Boys & Girls Club for an event in August.

“These children have been through so much,” Marietta said. “It is wonderful to have someone to guide our families to local resources and help them develop strategies to support the children through life pressures and changes. We think if we give grandparents the same resources we give foster parents, the kids could stay in their families. We just need to give them a little support.”

For more information about Bella’s Group and its parties, visit http://foreverfamily.org/BellasGroup.html.

Thousands of Hollywood residents benefit the environment by recycling and preventing their newspapers, aluminum and plastic from ending up in a landfill each month, but one resident wants to take recycling one step further, helping a local nonprofit organization in the process.

While volunteering for the Golf for Art tournament benefiting the Art and Culture Center in April, resident Marty Jacobsen of South Florida VoIP saw a large number of soda and beer cans winding up in the trash. He then had an idea. If he could gather those cans and sell them, the money generated could be used to benefit Hollywood’s Community Enhancement Collaboration, a nonprofit organization that aims to enhance the quality of life for the community by advancing and strengthening the economic, health, civic and social interests while improving community pride and promoting active participation by all citizens.      

“This program is about recycling money for organizations that help people recycle their lives,” Jacobsen said. “The CEC helps people in the Washington Park neighborhood learn computer skills, collects food for its food bank and has toy drives. It’s a great organization.”

Jacobsen approached Hillcrest General Manager Lewis Rissman about collecting cans from the golf course, and Rissman said the decision to get involved was a “no brainer.”

“Marty called out of the blue, but it was perfect timing,” he said. “We’ve been thinking about recycling the things on the golf course for years. We try to do whatever we can for the community, so it was perfect. If we have the opportunity to help people in our own backyard, we’re happy to do it.”

Despite being the slow season on the golf course, Rissman said Hillcrest filled up two 95-gallon recycling bins in only four days at the start of the initiative, and Jacobsen said they average around $80 to $100 a week. The proceeds from the recycled cans will go into the CEC’s hurricane/emergency fund account, and as more is raised, the proceeds will foster the development of more programs and resources like toy drives, Thanksgiving feeding, education programs, food banks, crime watch and computer training. It will also help cover administrative costs.   

“Marty is one unique individual who stepped up to the plate with new ideas,” said Nadine McCrea, executive director of the CEC. “He looks for ways for small nonprofit organizations like us to be served so that we are able to serve others. As a nonprofit organization, we welcome different ideas and various ways to raise funds. Money is our bloodline, just as volunteers are the muscle and brain. We must have some sort of cash flow to survive, and I am thankful for Marty and anyone else’s ideas to help the CEC.”

Jacobsen said they will expand the recycling initiative to the Hollywood Beach Golf Resort and Country Club soon and will search for places that pay higher prices for aluminum cans, so the CEC can make even more money to cover costs.

“I try to do a number of good things for charities because it’s important for business owners in the community to give back to their community,” Jacobsen said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

For more information about the Community Enhancement Collaboration, visit http://www.cechollywood.org/.

Hollywood philanthropist and South Florida business executive Mike Asseff recently launched a major charity initiative to help raise funds for six area nonprofits, including two Hollywood-based arts organizations.

Asseff, a Hollywood native and the son of Hollywood City Commissioner Patty Asseff, made the announcement at his March 5 wedding to his wife, Kendra, at the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami. The couple formed the Asseff Foundation, a 501(c)(3) organization, in 2010 to help organizations that are making a difference in the lives of South Floridians.

The foundation currently is raising funds for the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, South Florida Ballet Theater, American Airlines’ Wings Foundation, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, St. Thomas Aquinas High School’s tuition assistance program and the Bo Alvarez Foundation. The Asseff Foundation has raised more than $25,000 since its inception.

Mike Asseff, the co-founding principal and officer of Structured Asset Funding (dba 123 Lumpsum) in Hallandale Beach, said he and his wife, Kendra, a Marietta, Okla., native and a flight attendant for American Airlines, “share a common life value, which is to take every opportunity to give back to the community.”

The Asseff Foundation’s motto is “helping others help others,” and its goal is to assist as many charities, both local and national, as possible.
“Throughout the past 15 years, I’ve dedicated my time and resources to multiple organizations and charities,” said Mike Asseff, who raised more than $50,000 for the Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund. “I have found that each charity I have been involved with is important and valuable to the community. To choose one charity to support seemed a very difficult task. By setting up the Asseff Foundation, it allows donors to support one charity that can help multiple local organizations in their fundraising efforts.”

Six organizations will benefit from the Asseff Foundation’s current charity initiative:

The Art and Cultural Center of Hollywood, now celebrating 36 years of programming to the South Florida community, impacts more than 50,000 residents and visitors annually through its innovative gallery exhibitions, live stage performances and visual and performing arts education programs for adults and children. The center is one of only seven Broward County Commission-designated Major Cultural Institutions in the county out of more than 550 cultural nonprofits.

Hollywood-based South Florida Ballet Theater includes a professional ballet company and the Florida Apprentice Ballet School for students of all ages, and offers the Art Education Youth Program, a scholarship program for low-income and at-risk children in the community. Founded in 2000 by classically trained ballet dancer and choreographer Lynda DeChane-Audette and her husband, Joseph Audette, SFBT stages full-length ballet productions and smaller-scale performances.

The Wings Foundation is a nonprofit grassroots volunteer organization that collects and administers funds from and for flight attendants on the American Airlines system seniority list who are in critical need of financial assistance. Support is provided to those who are impacted by illness, injury or disability; are out of sick time; are without disability benefits; or have experienced a catastrophe or disaster that causes major hardship.
The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis is dedicated to finding new treatments for spinal cord injuries through a multidisciplinary approach that includes an international team of more than 200 scientists, researchers and clinicians. Co-founded in 1985 by NFL linebacker Nick Buoniconti after his son Marc sustained a spinal cord injury during a college football game, the state-of-the-art facility at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine is the world’s most comprehensive SCI research center.

St. Thomas Aquinas High School, which has provided a college-preparatory education rooted in the Catholic tradition to generations of South Floridians since 1936, offers need-based tuition assistance to qualified students through the school’s Student Opportunity Fund. More than $1.6 million dollars in financial assistance is provided annually to those students who are not able to absorb full tuition costs, which run between $8,200 and $10,200 per year.

The Bo Alvarez Children’s Foundation promotes water safety and helps children with special needs. The foundation was formed by Michelle Alvarez and other concerned parents after her 2-year-old son Bo nearly drowned in 2005 and suffered severe brain damage. The mission of the foundation is to prevent similar tragedies in Florida, where drowning is the No. 1 cause of death of children younger than 5.

For more information on the Asseff Foundation or the nonprofit organizations it assists, visit http://assefffoundation.com.

At his Bar Mitzvah almost two years ago, Hollywood resident David Broide asked his family and friends to make a donation to the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center rather than to him. The Center sent out a request for donations weeks earlier and because David had a grandfather who was a partisan during the Holocaust, he knew it was important to help the Center spread its message.

After collecting those initial donations, David pondered the gravity of 6 million people killed during the Holocaust and had an idea: David would commemorate the 6 million victims by collecting one penny for each person who perished. The action, he said, would help people understand what 6 million looks like and would help people never forget the victims.

“I want people to see the impact of 6 million,” David said. “I want to remember all those lives lost during the Holocaust and make sure everyone realizes that the Holocaust happened and affected a lot of people. It was a crime against humanity.”

The soon-to-be 15 year old has collected about 2 million pennies to date, and the Documentation and Education Center has the bottles of pennies on display.

“When you see all these pennies and bags, it really hits you,” said Helen Broide, David’s mother. “It’s amazing. We are so excited and proud of David. He’s an inspiration to us all.”

David said his main motivation behind the project comes from his grandfather, who always shared his stories from the Holocaust with his family. As a partisan, his grandfather survived by hiding in forests. Some Jews who managed to escape from camps even formed their own fighting units. These fighters, or partisans, were concentrated in densely wooded areas. One large group of partisans in occupied Soviet territory hid in a forest near the Lithuanian capital of Vilna. They were able to derail hundreds of trains and kill more than 3,000 German soldiers, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Hearing stories like these inspired David, and after his grandfather’s passing, David made a promise to keep his grandfather’s legacy alive.

The Holocaust Documentation and Education Center — founded in Hollywood in 1980 as a nonsectarian, nonprofit, multifaceted organization with a mission to put names and faces to the Holocaust victims — provided the perfect venue to do just that.

David chose to represent victims with pennies because he said everyone has pennies in his or her pockets. It’s easy to donate spare change, he said. He has received a lot of support from the community, and Helen said they have even received donations from people in New York, New Jersey and Costa Rica. If people send checks or dollars, David simply converts them into pennies and has them delivered to the Center by a Brinks truck. David has not decided what to do with the money once he reaches his goal because now he just wants to focus on spreading his message and collecting pennies.

“I personally feel that when younger generations see my project, they will realize that the Holocaust is an important thing to remember,” David said. “Whatever it takes to get to 6 million pennies, I’m willing to do.”

Anyone interested in making a donation can e-mail David at neverforgetneveragainpennies@gmail.com or visit the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center located at 2021 Harrison St. For more information about the Center, visit www.hdec.org.