After years of receiving emails from people asking me if I would kindly accept an inheritance of their estate worth a vast fortune from Nigeria, I’ve become skeptical of the emails I receive. Even with Birthdays For All, we’ve encountered people with fake identities who always seem to want to wire us huge sums of money from random countries. Well last month, I almost deleted an email from Jack Sortini, who said that he was from Johnson & Johnson, looking to help us out. My scam senses definitely kicked in. How would a huge multi-national organization, founded in 1886; find our tiny Charleston nonprofit, founded less than a year ago?
I put my skepticism aside, and after some Googling, I confirmed that it was legit. At first, I was surprised. Then I got super excited and replied before it was too late!
Jack asked if his team of 70+ sales reps could volunteer to help us during their South East regional meeting in Charleston. Being the kind people they are, they like to choose local charities to support when they conduct these meetings. They found Birthdays For All after researching local nonprofits and decided to do something really special for the local foster children in the Lowcountry area.
I sent Jack the wishlists (via DSS) from the 26 children with birthdays in April. He said they would see what they could do to get the presents. At the back of Jack’s mind he was a little worried about what he signed up for. How many Playstations or Xboxes would be on the list?
When he read the list, he realized that these kids didn’t ask for things that most of us would consider luxury.
The most popular request was a lotion set from Bath and Body Works from the teen girls. Other children asked for stuffed animals to give them comfort while in the foster home. One 11 year old boy asked for a stress ball.
When we showed up at the Mills House to meet Jack and his Johnson and Johnson team, we saw that they had bought everything on every wishlist and much more!
Ben gave a presentation about the story of Birthdays For All and the state of foster care in South Carolina. Afterwards, they did some fun team building exercises that involved different challenges to wrap all the presents as a team. They even included a singing contest for the best rendition of Happy Birthday!
We’d like to express our thanks to Jack Sortini and Johnson and Johnson for choosing to support Birthdays For All during their meeting. It’s amazing to see how a fun team activity can help create a special experience for these foster children as they tear open the wrapping paper on their birthdays.
Check out this video created by one of the Johnson and Johnson team.
To find out ways how you and your organization can help bring some birthday cheer to foster children, visit our Get Involved page.