Karaoke Night

Last Friday night, we had our first "big" event for The DEANA Foundation. It was a "Karaoke For a Cause" night and we hosted it at an adult daycare facility in Riverside. I'm feeling so good about the results of this fundraiser that I wanted to share about it with you all!!

To start with, my favorite part of the whole night was being able to recognize and honor my mom. Even though she wasn't there physically, I was able to share with our guests about the woman who has inspired this foundation. It felt great to share some things about my mom and the woman she once was; the person she really is. It's important to me that my mom is remembered-not just for her strange and quirky behaviors from dementia.

We were privileged to have some special guests in attendance: two City Councilmen (one who is retired and one who currently serves Riverside county) as well as Riverside's Chief of Police. They were very happy and supportive of the mission we are trying to accomplish. City Councilman Chris MacArthur even got up and gave some remarks, thanking us for our work. It felt amazing to have their support!

We had a good turn out and all of our guests had a great time. The food was good; our DJ was awesome and kept the party alive. I was surprised at how many people actually got up and did karaoke! There were some really great entertainers in our crowd. We started the karaoke portion off with an opening performance. Our VP (Melissa) my friend (Mickelle) and myself dressed up and sang a song. My good friend, Ember, helped us to rewrite the lyrics to The Spice Girl's "Wannabe" to go along with our purpose for the night. It was silly and a lot of fun. (You can see the video on our facebook page).

So now for the important (and exciting) update. While our numbers haven't been confirmed yet, I can tell you that we raised well over $1,000 that night, which I would say is awesome for our first big event like this! In addition to that money raised, Care Connexxus awarded our foundation a grant that we can award to a family to give them a week of free adult daycare at their facility. Combined with the other money we have raised throughout the year, we are ready to start awarding our caregiving grants this fall!! I am feeling really excited about this! We still have lots of room to grow, but considering we've really only been off the ground and running for about 7 months now, I think this is a very big accomplishment. We anticipate our attendance to double next year and our supporters are already asking about our next event (stay tuned!)