Make Your Mark on the World Event
Recently I interviewed ‘90210’ actor Manish Dayal for Look to the Stars about his involvement with charity…the young actor, who also appeared alongside Vincent ‘Pooh-Bear’ D’Onofrio on the series finale of Law & Order Criminal Intent, turned me onto an incredible organization he is involved with called Nanubhai. (Read the interview here).
And now, like a dream come true, Nanubhai is set to benefit from the ‘Make Your Mark On the World’ event. Details: Griffin Lounge in NYC this Friday July 29 at 7pm (VIP hour) or 8pm (Free entry).
Without a single Athlebrity involved, I choose to blog about this event because it’s the perfect combination of all my ‘loves’ in the world: charity, India, giving back, Nanubhai, a Lost Boy (Valentino Achak Deng), and (gulp) M. Night Shyamalan.
From the good peeps at Nanubhai: ‘Givology’s goal is to raise $20,000 on Friday night to be donated to various organizations that they partner with, including Nanubhai. The event will be attended by a number of Nanubhai volunteers including our Executive Direct…and the auction portion of the evening will consist of photographs of Nanubhai students, along with photographs and artwork from a number of other attending organizations.’
Makes my heart sing: Co-founded by M. Night Shyamalan and his wife, Dr. Bhavna Shyamalan, the M. Night Shyamalan Foundation is dedicated to increasing the opportunities of the disadvantaged in the pursuit of empowerment and social justice. Since its creation in 2001, the Foundation has contributed almost $1.7 million to projects in support of education, sustainable agriculture, water projects, health, poverty alleviation, hunger relief, and other fields.
About the Keynote Speaker, Valentino Achak Deng
Valentino Achak Deng’s life has been described by The New York Times as a testament “to human resilience over tragedy and disaster.” Born in the village of Marial Bai, in Southern Sudan, he was forced to flee in the 1980s, at the age of seven, when civil war erupted. As one of the so-called Lost Boys, he trekked hundreds of miles, pursued by animals and government militias, and lived for years in refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia. He eventually resettled in America, to a new set of challenges. Deng’s life is the basis of Dave Eggers’ epic book What Is the What, which Francine Prose calls “an extraordinary work of witness, and of art.” In 2009, as part of his Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, he opened the Marial Bai Secondary School, the region’s first proper high school.
The Event: VIP entry is $75, but Look To the Stars readers can receive a special discount of $10 off VIP entry when they use the discount code GivVIPt. To inquire about an invitation, contact Julia Gooding at julia.gooding@givology.org. For more information, click here. Griffin is located in New York City’s meatpacking district at 50 Gansevoort Street.
The Nanubhai Education Foundation, founded in 2004, is dedicated to providing equal access to India’s rapidly growing economic opportunities to the students of India’s rural public high schools through education. We work to inspire the students of our partner schools, especially women, to achieve excellence, enroll in higher education and participate in India’s new economy.
As always, thanks for reading~
delinda@athlebrities.com
