With the beginning of October comes the official settling in of fall. This month promises to be full of colorful leaves, warm sweaters, pumpkin everything and, most importantly, Karma for Cara events.

Make sure to carve out some time to participate in one of our three events happening this October.

On Saturday, October 11, Bare Hills Raquet and Fitness Club is hosting the second annual Karma for Cara Spin-a-thon. The six-hour outdoor fundraiser runs from 8 a.m….

At Karma for Cara we strive to provide recognition to outstanding leaders in service by featuring them on our website as a Hero. The Heroes we are looking to recognize are those who are passionately making a difference in the lives of others. The Heroes currently featured on our website have found creative ways to give back to their community such as Rose Becker who asked that in lieu of presents for her Bat-Mitzvah that people make donations to Karma for Cara, and Natalie Newman who was the top fundraiser at the Kennedy Krieger Institute’s ROAR for Autism Event….

The Karma for Cara crew had a happily very busy summer! We welcomed back Abby and our new summer intern Nisha to the K4C family. This summer, Nisha focused on researching and implementing a K4C Excellence in Nursing Award. The second nurses award will be presented at the “PRS Guitars One Night, One Show, One Cause” event in Baltimore on October 13 featuring Santana. When we receive more information on how to order tickets, we will post it on Facebook/website!…

K4C Family, we have exciting news! Our new website is officially up and running! Please visit our new website to learn more about our programs such as the K4C Club in high schools and how to receive your own copy of “Cara Cookie Volunteers.” You can also learn about other ways to get involved with Karma for Cara, as well as catch up on K4C news with our blog and upcoming events. Please share the website and our Facebook page with your friends and family!…

On Tuesday, the Karma for Cara team visited Farragut Career Academy to volunteer with Chicago Cares and the Greenstar Movement.

The Greenstar Movement works to beautify and revitalize urban communities. The current project at Farragut Career Academy is an outdoor mural for the students and staff to enjoy. After a brief tutorial we got to work using mortar and tile to mosaic the wall! Our section was a sizeable leaf that turned into a puzzle. It was fun to hammer out the tile and find the perfect place for it on the wall.  …

Karma for Cara has had an exciting first half of this busy month of July and wanted to give you an idea of what we have been working on.

Our team met with two PR experts Colleen and Alli to begin the process of getting ready for the launch of our book, “Cara’s Cookie Volunteers”, as well as the launch of our new microgrants program. We are excited at the prospect of not only being able to share our message with a broader audience, but also to sponsor youths in their own volunteering projects….

At Karma for Cara, we talk a lot about volunteering and taking time to give back. We recently decided there is no better way to inspire others to serve than to lead by example, so on Tuesday the K4C team visited the JUF Uptown Cafe for a night of volunteering.

JUF Uptown Cafe, run through the Jewish United Fund, is a kosher anti-hunger program located in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. The program serves both Jewish and non-Jewish clients, but remains kosher in order to be accessible to everyone….

We heard a great story about kids and adults taking action to help their community last week.
Rose Becker and Doug Becker took part in building a playground at a city school in Baltimore.

Pictured here are Rose, her friend Caty, and Doug at the ribbon cutting. Way to go, guys!

Caty, Rose and Doug

Karma for Cara had a busy week last week! Here’s a recap of what happened.

On Tuesday our intern Abby visited a kindergarten classroom in Glenview, Illinois and read our Cara Cookie Volunteers story to a group of 60 students. The children were happily engaged and provided us with valuable feedback. All of the kindergarteners agreed that they would want to read the story again with friends and family. The only criticism the book received is that we did not include pizza in the list of food brought to the nursing home in the story!…

On Wednesday, the Karma for Cara team went to Evanston to meet with two groups of students at Northwestern University. These groups spent the last quarter in school utilizing the strategy of design thinking to promote youth volunteerism. We tasked the students with the mission of designing a way to make volunteering accessible and appealing to high school students. The students’ final projects were incredibly creative and left us very excited!

The first student group we met with, Caroline Borowski, Heesun Eom, Jiahui Guo and Abby Hofmeister, created Service for Others (S40), a phone application that employs user-friendly tools to connect high school students and engage them in service opportunities….