YOU CAN HELP THE FOUNDATION GROW

You can help the Foundation empower more people, encourage more students, and respond more effectively and efficiently to the hundreds of grant requests we receive, by making a donation to help the Foundation grow. Help us set the stage in 2008 for more outreach, more grants funded, and more Pay It Forward projects set in motion!

Pay It Forward with a donation to the Foundation today....
your gift will grow and grow in 2008!

To make a contribution by mail, send your check or money order to:

The Pay It Forward Foundation
P.O. Box 552
Cambria, CA 93428

• To make an honorary or a memorial donation, please include the name of the person(s) to be honored or remembered, along with the name(s) and address(es) of anyone who should be notified of the gift. We will send a prompt acknowledgement of the gift.
  
• To leave a legacy for generations to come, mail your check or money order earmarked for the Pay It Forward Endowment Fund. We will add it to our special fund designed to keep original gifts intact, spending only the interest accrued on Pay It Forward activities. For more information about making a bequest from your estate or other planned gifts, Please email us today.

The Pay It Forward Foundation is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation. Donations are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

In an effort to reach out to others while showing school spirit during Catholic Schools Week, the Student Council at Our Lady of Mercy School sponsored a “Dress Down Extravaganza.” During this two week “dress down” celebration, students paid to dress in different colors each day in support of various charities; ultimately creating a “Rainbow of Caring.” On Wednesday, students dressed in purple to aid the efforts of Pay It Forward and collected $163.05. Please accept our donation along with our thanks for all you do for this cause!
Respectfully, Ms. Meribeth Mohr, Advisor, Madison, CT

The Pay It Forward Foundation is honored to have the support of thousands of individuals and organizations. Just a few of the most recent are acknowledged at left and below. Thanks to these wonderful people who have been touched by Pay It Forward.

UM-FUND YOGA TEACHERS DO IT AGAIN IN 2008

As they have for the last three years, the sixth Into This World Yoga Teacher Training group had their Um-Fund weekend last month. Their names appear in the Donor list on the right. Their leader, Suzanne Cardinal, explains,

"They were inspired by the Into This World Yoga Teachers who preceded them, and by the ongoing work of the Pay It Forward Foundation. They send you an Om, namaste, many blessings, and $500 in continued support of the Karma Yoga you so elegantly facilitate in the world."

Thank you--and namaste--to you all!

MEMORIAL FUND HONORS  SUZANNE SLATON, 2008

When Suzanne Slaton passed away in October, her family honored her strong belief in the philosophy of Pay It Forward by asking friends to give donations to the Foundation in lieu of flowers, setting up the Suzanne Slaton Memorial Fund in her name. The response has been breathtaking. The donations from Carole Hossan, Edgar Saenz, the Drollinger Family Trust. Gail Carney, Jummiy Hall, Catherine Carney, Kenneth Yooga, Lee Gangl, Leon Berkovich, Patricia Finnegan, Patricia Urban, Robert Kadota, Patricia Karasick, The Police Advisory Board, Roy Detisch, Michael Slaton, Hannes and Deepa Vilhjalmsson, and G. F. Ruppel, Jr. have totaled enough to fund FIVE SCHOOL GRANTS. The Foundation wishes to express not only our condolences on their loss of a beloved friend and family member but also our deep appreciation for supporting, on into the future, the work Sue Slaton so strongly believed in while she was here.

The Journey from Um to Om 2007
Into This World Yoga Teacher Training instructor Suzanne Cardinal demonstrates how a great yoga teacher uses language to empower and encourage students by, among many techniques, eliminating the "ums"” from her students teaching vocabulary.

During one recent teacher-training weekend,

Ms. Cardinal decided to fine-tune her students language and "um" for charity. Every time an "um", "ah" or " you know" slipped out, a coin was placed in a cup for the Um Fund.” At the end of the weekend, Ms. Cardinal asked the group to read aloud, completely "um" free, a page from the Pay It Forward Foundation website.

All agreed that Pay It Forward embodies the values of Karma Yoga and sent an Om and Namaste along with a sizable donation from the Um Fund to the Foundation.

From Um to Om 2006
Special thanks once again to Into This World Yoga Teacher Training instructor Suzanne Cardinal. Along with her most recent graduating class of students, she raised $500, or the cost of one maximum mini-grant. The Pay It Forward Foundation then chose the following special grant application to fund with their donation:

The application we matched up with the Yoga teachers' group came from the Tahandalai Puther district of India, which contains seven hamlet villages. Each hamlet depends for drinking water on one bore well, which operates with one Mark III hand pump.

Unfortunately, with constant use, these hand pumps are frequently under repair, and therein lies the big problem:
The person--one person!-- who maintains them is responsible for 33 districts, in which there are about 310 hamlets.

And that's where this Pay It Forward mini-grant "changes the world". The mini-grant financed by the Yoga group will enable twenty youths to be trained in the skills and tools required for the trade of bore well maintenance, so each can do the job in his own village. Not only will twenty unemployed youth from 20 villages be transformed by this project into skilled men with a valuable trade, it will also "help to make the people self sustained and avoid dependency always from government sources."

Then as each young man passes his training along to another, the expanding chain of trained repair men will continue to spread exponentially...the Pay It Forward way.

Thank you, "Into This World Yoga Teacher Training" participants!

. In Memory: Sandra Panosian White
The Pay It Forward Foundation in February 2006 received donations in loving memory of Sandra Panosian White, who had requested that instead of floral tributes at the time of her passing, contributions be made to the Foundation. The Foundation wishes to thank Debora and P.J. White with Kelly and Colin; J. Robert Frawley; Ernst and Irmgard Edelmann; Bonnie Scott; William and Susan Carney; James and Malinda McCann; Richard and Joyce Pirozzolo; and Ellen Stephanian.

In Memory: Christi Michelle Nowak
In October 2005, the girls at the Cheetah in Atlanta, Georgia made a generous donation to the Pay It Forward Foundation in loving remembrance of Christi Michelle Nowak, “a beautiful person inside and out, always there for you when you needed something. In her short life she touched many and now in her memory we would like to continue to touch many more.”

Ann Bowman Lee
The Pay It Forward Foundation is grateful to Ann Bowman Lee for her generous bequest to help in our ongoing work.           Ms. Lee, of Lubbock Texas, passed away in March of 2002. We are sorry we did not know her in life, but consider her a great friend to our foundation.