This has been long and coming. We finally got around to redesigning the home page. It now includes a list of our events, and pictures of our previous parties. We hope that you enjoy the redesign.

If you have any questions about it, shoot us an email or leave a comment.

Last week we met with Samantha from the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning - a charter school that is looking for our support on the fund raising and exposure front. A few of us are going to a presentation that they are giving on March 19th. We will update on that next week.

Samantha gave a presentation about what her school does, we were able to briefly learn about how this school is different from the current public school system in methodology and overall environment. It also gave us a look at how educational methods are changing and evolving in this 2.0 world of ours. Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures posted meeting notes from a forum that USV hosted called, Hacking Education.

After reading his summary, I was very excited to see that some of the things that they discussed were in line with what Samantha was telling us about the Bronx Charter School for Better Learning. In particular, there was a mention that:

“1) The student (and his/her parents) is increasingly going to take control of his/her education including choice of schools, teachers, classes, and even curriculum. That’s what the web does. It transfers control from institutions to individuals and its going to do that to education too.”

This is what the charter school is preaching in their methodology. Check out the post to see more. Included are notes about the educational power of texting and new technologies that were not available to many of us when we were in school. It will be interesting to see how the education evolves in the next 10 years.

- Brian

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/03/hacking-education-continued.html

$1 at a time, and soon enough you’ll raise a few thousand dollars, and enough money to save someone’s home, and a family’s Christmas. This is the story of Ebony and Daniel Sampson. It was posted on CNN.

Here is a testament to the power of blogging and raising money for charity.

Story Highlights
- The kindness of strangers and power of the Internet saves one family’s Christmas
- The Sampsons faced foreclosure until a friend blogged about their plight
- Within days, strangers from around the country donated more than $11,000
- Ebony Sampson: “It makes you understand what the season is all about”

Here is our 2008 Christmas e-card that we made in conjunction with the folks of Peas and Nuts. We hope that you enjoy it. The video is set to the song, This Christmas by Donny Hathaway. Get ready for a new year and a new season of Party 4 a Cause, people.

Happy Holidays everybody!

Exciting news! Brian was recently interviewed by the NY Times for his work in Party 4 a Cause!!! They are writing a story about party philanthropy. The article is slated to come out November 12th in their special section called, Giving.

As a plus, they are sending a photographer to the Wine Tasting Event on October 21st (Next tuesday)! Be sure to get your tickets now. To reserve your tickets now, go to: http://party4acause.eventbrite.com

Who wants a Free Hug? This is about the Free Hugs Campaign.We really love this video. It’s one of those videos that makes you feel so great after you watch it.

This is really what P4aC is about. Not necessarily giving out free hugs on the street to random people but trying to make people feel better in anyway possible. There’s a lot of bad stuff going on out there. And it’s our job to make it better!

Hope you enjoy this video as much as us! Maybe We’ll have a hugging party one day.

For more information go to www.freehugscampaign.org