Jen­nifer Buck and Joanne Tar­ling, of Rochester-based non-profit, Charlotte’s Wings, vis­ited the United Methodist Women’s group of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Rochester this week. The pair shared the story of Charlotte’s Wings and grate­fully received gen­er­ous dona­tions from the UMC Women in sup­port of Charlotte’s Wings’ work.

Charlotte’s Wings is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion based in Rochester, MI which was founded in March 2008. They were founded in mem­ory of a local infant girl, Char­lotte, who died at just 5 months old of a rare degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease. In lieu of bap­tism gifts, her par­ents made a large dona­tion of books to the pedi­atric unit at Beau­mont Hos­pi­tal, Royal Oak, MI. Charlotte’s Wings was founded to con­tinue and expand this ini­tia­tive – donat­ing books to chil­dren in hos­pi­tal and hos­pice care through­out Michi­gan. To date they have donated almost 20,000 books to Michi­gan hos­pi­tals and hos­pices. Through this endeavor, they aim to pro­vide hope and smiles dur­ing trau­matic times.

To find out more about the work of Charlotte’s Wings, you can visit their web­site at www.charlottes-wings.com.

Joanne Tar­ling (sec­ond from left) and Jen­nifer Buck (third from left) along­side mem­bers of the St. Paul’s United Methodist Women, hold­ing some of the books donated to Charlotte’s Wings by the group.

Charlotte’s Wings donated 75 copies of “The Polar Express” to the Wish Chil­dren at Rain­bow Con­nec­tion.  This was part of their Hol­i­day party hosted in Decem­ber for all of their Wish Children.

Third and fourth grade Girl Scouts from North Hill Ele­men­tary School manned their school book fair this week to col­lect dona­tions on behalf of Rochester non-profit, Charlotte’s Wings.

The stu­dents col­lected dona­tions of books pur­chased in the book fair, which ran at the school dur­ing con­fer­ences, as well as cash dona­tions. Charlotte’s Wings will put these to excel­lent use in sup­port of their mis­sion to donate books to chil­dren in hos­pi­tal and hos­pice care through­out Michigan.

Alyssa, Mia, Olivia, PJ and Lena of the North Hill Ele­men­tary School Girl Scouts, with some of the donated books.

From Jen Buck:

I had the plea­sure of meet­ing Natalie today at Beau­mont.  She was read­ing one of our donated books “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”.  She kindly allowed me to take her pic­ture.  She resisted a smile but finally gave in:)  She was very sweet.  Her grand­par­ents expressed their grat­i­tude and I just noticed they posted on our FB page.  Here are some pics from my visit today.  We donated over 500 books to Beau­mont today and 6 nooks!  We also donated 322 books to Children’s Hos­pi­tal.  It was a good day:)

Amber Stevens of Barnes & Noble load­ing us up today with almost 600 books (worth the best part of $6000!) that we pur­chased for Beau­mont, Children’s Hos­pi­tal, and The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion. She also gave us 400 books today from the Barnes and Noble Rochester Hills hol­i­day book drive for CW. The book drive has only been run­ning since Novem­ber 1st so we are SO thrilled with the response! Don’t for­get it will con­tinue to run through Jan 1st if you would like to donate a book and help us bring more smiles to Michi­gan hos­pi­tals this hol­i­day season!

The giv­ing spirit of the hol­i­days is arriv­ing a lit­tle early to Barnes and Noble book store in Rochester Hills this year, as they announce the return of their book drive to ben­e­fit Rochester-based non-profit, Charlotte’s Wings. From Novem­ber 1st through Jan­u­ary 1st, cus­tomers at Barnes and Noble Rochester Hills will be invited to pur­chase an extra children’s book to be donated to Charlotte’s Wings. Last year, this drive resulted in Barnes and Noble cus­tomers donat­ing over 1,000 books, which Charlotte’s Wings dis­trib­uted to chil­dren in hos­pi­tal and hos­pice care in Michi­gan and the ambi­tion is to donate at least as many books again this year.

Charlotte’s Wings is a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion based in Rochester, MI, which was founded in March 2008. They were founded in mem­ory of a local infant girl, Char­lotte, who died at just 5 months old of a rare degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease. In lieu of bap­tism gifts, her par­ents made a large dona­tion of books to the pedi­atric unit at Beau­mont Hos­pi­tal, Royal Oak, MI. Charlotte’s Wings was founded to con­tinue and expand this ini­tia­tive – donat­ing books to chil­dren in hos­pi­tal and hos­pice care through­out Michi­gan. To date they have donated around 17,000 to Michi­gan hos­pi­tals and hos­pices. Through this endeavor, they aim to pro­vide hope and smiles dur­ing trau­matic times.

Jen­nifer Buck, chair of Charlotte’s Wings is thrilled with the oppor­tu­nity this book drive rep­re­sents. “We are so thank­ful for this sup­port from Barnes and Noble this hol­i­day sea­son. This kind of dona­tion will make an enor­mous dif­fer­ence and will allow us to touch the lives of so many chil­dren across the state who find them­selves spend­ing time this win­ter in the care of Michi­gan hos­pi­tals and hos­pices. We are so very grate­ful for the sup­port of Barnes and Noble and the gen­eros­ity of their cus­tomers this hol­i­day season.”

To find out more about the work of Charlotte’s Wings, you can visit their web­site at www.charlottes-wings.com .

From Helen DeVos Children’s Hos­pi­tal in Grand Rapids:

I can’t tell you how much of an impact the book carts have made with our patients and fam­i­lies!  The fact that we are able to offer this mobile ser­vice to patients that are not able to leave their rooms means a great deal.  The books def­i­nitely bring com­fort, dis­trac­tion and smiles! Your gen­eros­ity is truly appre­ci­ated and con­tin­ues to make a dif­fer­ence everyday!

Save the Date for this great event from Rochester’s own The Funky Frog, Children’s Resale Bou­tique. Pizza, bowl­ing and lots of fun for the whole fam­ily — not to men­tion a 50/50 Raf­fle and book dona­tions to ben­e­fit CW! Thanks so much to The Frog for all their support!

Click on the below link for more information:

https://www.facebook.com/funkyfrogresale/posts/136969409760059

Over 500 peo­ple gath­ered Sat­ur­day night at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester for Charlotte’s Wings’ 5^thAnnual Ben­e­fit.

Raised $50,000!

The event fea­tured an amaz­ing array of silent auc­tion prizes – every­thing from trips to the Caribbean to a back­yard tram­po­line to a day rac­ing a Cadil­lac at the Mon­ti­cello Motor Club near New York. Guests also enjoyed the Royal Park Hotel’s deli­cious din­ner menu, had their pic­tures taken in the event pho­to­booth and danced the night away to the evening’s DJ. An espe­cially pop­u­lar choice at the bar was the Charlotte’s Wings sig­na­ture cock­tail, the ‘Booka­tini’, which returned for its sec­ond year at the event. Local media per­son­al­i­ties Jamie Samuelsen and Christy McDon­ald per­formed as Mas­ter and Mis­tress of Cer­e­monies for the evening.

This is the 5th Annual Ben­e­fit for Charlotte’s Wings and the third to be held at the Royal Park Hotel. The non-profit was founded in March of 2008, in mem­ory of a local infant girl, Char­lotte, who died at just 5 months old of a rare degen­er­a­tive brain dis­ease. In lieu of bap­tism gifts, her par­ents made a large dona­tion of books to the pedi­atric unit at Beau­mont Hos­pi­tal, Royal Oak, MI. Charlotte’s Wings was founded to con­tinue and expand this ini­tia­tive – donat­ing books to chil­dren in hos­pi­tal and hos­pice care across the whole of Michi­gan. To date they have donated over 15,000 to pedi­atric units in hos­pi­tals and hos­pices and founded 4 pedi­atric ref­er­ence libraries across the state.

The 5^th Annual Ben­e­fit on Sat­ur­day night raised $50,000 to fur­ther their mis­sion – a hugely suc­cess­ful result for the Charlotte’s Wings team. Says Jen­nifer Buck, Charlotte’s Wings founder and chair, “The ongo­ing gen­eros­ity of our sup­port­ers will allow us to con­tinue to expand the scope and quan­tity of the projects that we are able to take on. We are so grate­ful for the gen­eros­ity of our sup­port­ers and so excited to think of all of the young lives through­out Michi­gan that we are able to pos­i­tively impact as a result”.

To find out more about Charlotte’s Wings and the work they do go to www.charlottes-wings.com or look them up on Facebook.