{"id":7542,"date":"2018-12-06T15:56:55","date_gmt":"2018-12-06T20:56:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/groups.etown.edu\/news\/?p=7542"},"modified":"2019-02-15T10:40:06","modified_gmt":"2019-02-15T15:40:06","slug":"elizabethtown-colleges-giving-tree-to-benefit-seniors-non-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/2018\/12\/06\/elizabethtown-colleges-giving-tree-to-benefit-seniors-non-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabethtown College&#8217;s Giving Tree to benefit senior&#8217;s non-profit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every year during the holidays, Elizabethtown College puts up the Giving Tree in the Marketplace and fills it with goods that benefit different non-profits. Students, faculty and staff can sponsor a donation to help these organizations. This year, the Giving Tree will benefit the charity <em>Todd\u2019s Angels<\/em>, which was founded by senior Brooke Mazzone.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeing accepted as the recipient of the Giving Tree was a dream come true,\u201d Mazzone said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/now.etown.edu\/files\/2018\/12\/Brooke-Mezzone-Todds-Angels.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-7543 alignleft\" src=\"http:\/\/now.etown.edu\/files\/2018\/12\/Brooke-Mezzone-Todds-Angels-207x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"207\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>Mazzone is a social work and Spanish double major. She is a certified child welfare caseworker with the Lancaster County Children &amp; Youth Services, where she plans to continue her full-time job after graduation. She also gives an annual lecture about her experiences growing up as a foster family to educate students, faculty and staff about the foster care system.<\/p>\n<p>She founded <em>Todd\u2019s Angels<\/em> during her senior year in high school in 2015 and it is an infant clothing charity. She collects donations and distributes them to local hospitals in order to provide clothing for children born into the system.<\/p>\n<p>Her idea to start a non-profit started with a little boy named Todd, a baby taken at birth and placed into her family\u2019s care, arriving at her home in only a diaper. <em>Todd\u2019s Angels<\/em> seeks to provide clothing for children like him who have nothing when they are born, emphasizing that all children deserve the same quality of life and basic needs.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNot only does it provide clothing as a basic necessity, but it provides clothing as dignity,\u201d Mazzone said. \u201cThese kids are sent to foster homes with nothing on their backs. They deserve the same start as a child with an otherwise traditional family would.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mazzone stated that working for foster children is her passion and that running an organization to benefit that objective is fulfilling for her. She has been the only employee of <em>Todd\u2019s Angels<\/em> until recently, when her roommates became involved. This meant that all of the responsibilities of running a company, including marketing, networking, distribution, and inventory, defaulted to her. Even though these duties were very stressful to handle alone, knowing that she was making a difference in children\u2019s lives helped her muddle through any doubts.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cRunning my own non-profit is one of the most rewarding, exciting, and exhausting things I have ever done,\u201d she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>She said that being selected as the beneficiary of the Giving Tree was a coincidence since Dining Services was looking to donate to an infant charity this year. Unsure of the selection process, she reached out to Eric Turzai, head of Dining Services, and introduced <em>Todd\u2019s Angels<\/em> as an option. He immediately reached out to Mazzone to accept her non-profit.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I first came to see the tree in the Marketplace, friends captured my reaction on camera because of how emotional I got,\u201d Mazzone said. \u201cTo see [her project] develop into something recognizable [and] appreciated, [and] to have volunteers and an engaged campus makes me extremely proud of all my non-profit has become.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is the first time in the College\u2019s history that a student-led non-profit has been chosen to be the beneficiary of the Giving Tree. In years past, E-town has donated to organizations such as the Susquehanna Service Dogs and the YWCA. This tradition began in 2007, when Dining Services first purchased the tree frame and decorated it with poinsettias. In the following years, the department decided to fill the frame with donations that people could sponsor for local charities, according to Office Manager of Dining Services Lynda Hudzick.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m proud to go to a school that puts so much emphasis on service for others, and supports me in my mission,\u201d Mazzone said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every year during the holidays, Elizabethtown College puts up the Giving Tree in the Marketplace and fills it with goods that benefit different non-profits. Students, faculty and staff can sponsor a donation to help these organizations. This year, the Giving Tree will benefit the charity Todd\u2019s Angels, which was founded by senior Brooke Mazzone. \u201cBeing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":7628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[775,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-service","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/125"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7545,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7542\/revisions\/7545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.etown.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}