Tuesday, April 2, 2013
While some veterinarians take in strays and give them medical help, Dr. Michael Good has taken the idea to a new level.
Dogs bark. Phones ring. There's an antiseptic smell in the air. An injured pit bull, with a huge plastic collar, skids across the floor as his owner tries to coax him toward a room. A visitor tells someone she is waiting on Dr. Michael Good. The reply: "Good luck." Good talks fast and conducts his business at the same time. He sits briefly in his closet-sized office—the visitor has to sit outside to talk to him—at the Town & Country Veterinary Clinic in Marietta. While some veterinarians take in strays and give them medical help, Good, 58, has taken the idea to a whole new level. He started the Homeless Pet Foundation in 1998 as a means to find homes for stray animals, a population that grows every year. The animals are pictured on the …
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Our Father's Hands provides quality clothing to families in need and has expanded assistance from just a few schools to all in the county's school district.
Children living in shelters, abandoned buildings, cars in parking lots, extended-stay motels and safe houses after their mothers got out of abusive relationships—they’re the ones that drive Linda Lipp to continue on in the face of exhaustion and hardship. “These children do not have a refrigerator to put their artwork on when they come home from school,” the West Cobb woman said. “Often, these children only have what they can fit in a suitcase or a backpack.” Listening to God’s calling, Lipp gave up her job as a successful loan officer to found a ministry that helps clothe the hundreds of homeless children in the Cobb County School District. Our Father’s Hands started in 2005 with just a storage building at Lost Mountain Baptist Church. …
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
The Cobb Alcohol Taskforce teams up with civic organizations and the government to help reduce underage drinking.
The Cobb Alcohol Taskforce is conducting a community survey to help identify effective strategies to reduce underage and youth binge drinking. More than 2,000 participants from Acworth, Austell, Kennesaw, Marietta, Powder Springs, Smyrna and unincorporated Cobb County are needed by Sept. 30. A similar survey was previously conducted in 2009 as a requirement of the Sober Truth On Preventing Underage Drinking (STOP) Grant. Click here to take the survey online or access it on the Cobb Alcohol Taskforce website at www.cobbat.org. Representatives of the following community sectors are encouraged to participate: business, civic, education, faith, government, healthcare, justice, law enforcement, media, parent, non-profit and youth. For more …
Monday, August 20, 2012
Volunteers served nearly 190,000 lunches to families in need this summer.
- VOLUNTEERS IN THE NEWS
- Angela Chao
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Monday, August 20, 2012
The Summer Lunches Program at MUST Ministries has just ended, and volunteers handed out a total of 189,648 lunches to needy children this summer—a 34 percent increase from last year. MUST started the Summer Lunch Program in 1995 in Cobb and Cherokee Counties in an effort to fight child hunger. In 2011, MUST Volunteers delivered 103,000 lunches to hungry children in Cobb and Cherokee, and the program was expanded to Douglas, Paulding, North Fulton and Gwinnett communities this year.
Monday, August 6, 2012
Meet the new commander of the American Legion Post 304, and find out how you can support and connect with veterans in Cobb County.
- VOLUNTEERS IN THE NEWS
- Angela Chao
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Monday, August 6, 2012
The North Cobb American Legion Post 304 will be hosting its 2nd Annual 5K Run on Saturday, Aug. 18 at Dallas Landing Park in Acworth. The event helps raise money to support youths and veterans programs in Cobb County. You can register online at www.active.com, or click here to download the entry form on Post 304's website.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Kyle Beard created an app called "Sand Sketch" for the phone and iPad as his senior project. Some of the proceeds from the project go toward MUST's Cobb and Cherokee Summer Lunch Program.
- VOLUNTEERS IN THE NEWS
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012
When Kyle Beard began working on his senior project, the Woodstock High School student decided to do something that combined creativity with technical expertise. He wanted to develop something just right for his generation and donate some of the proceeds. He put 300 hours into his project and the result is an entertaining app called “Sand Sketch”. According to Beard, you can write a message in the sand on your phone or iPad and then shake it like an Etch-A-Sketch to make a wave roll up and wipe away your message. You can send your message to someone too, a quick way to say “Happy Birthday” or “I love you.” He tested his app on people from age 3 to 83 and everyone loved playing with it, so he thought he had a winning idea. "I've worked …
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Families with a child who has cancer "are in a dark valley." Marietta's Blue Skies lifts them "above the storms of cancer to the blue sky" by giving them the chance to unplug from the world and spend quality time at the beach as a family.
A message on your pillow, a tasty meal prepared for you, the smile on the face of someone you love, the support of a person you would have never encountered in your day-to-day world, an afternoon playing frisbee, the renewal of hope. It's the small things that make a difference, Melinda Mayton, the founder of Marietta's Blue Skies Ministries and a nurse at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, says. The journey of having a sick child can be difficult and leave you feeling isolated and in need of renewal and restoration, Mayton says. Blue Skies takes families who are walking through the valley of childhood illness on retreats. Families from around the country spend a week having fun at the beach. Children, both sick and healthy, laugh and play…
Monday, April 23, 2012
Ken, of Marietta, and Keith Myers collect the uniforms and stories of veterans and put them on display to pay tribute to their service and sacrifice.
A woman walks into the exhibit, searching out one item. She stops and stares for a long time at a worn green uniform. Tears fill her eyes as her gaze travels to a photo above the WWII uniform. The face of her deceased loved one stares back at her. This is a scene that Ken Myers has witnessed many times. Ken, 63, of Marietta, collects the uniforms and stories of veterans. He and his identical twin brother, Keith, display uniforms in "honor of all veterans who have served in the different branches." "Our dad and uncle were both naval aviators in World War II," Ken explained. Their father was a Hellcat Fighter and received medals for shooting down Japanese fighter planes. After the war, Ken's father and uncle decided to stay in the Navy. His …
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Carol Paschal and her husband started Cobb Street Ministries in 1973.
They come to her homeless, some battered and/or addicted, in need of a place to stay until they can get their life together. Carol Paschal explains it more simply. She helps women "who are hurting." Paschal and her deceased husband, Harvey, started Cobb Street Ministries in 1973 to assist those who needed their help. The couple was making plans to go to Ecuador as missionaries when they changed their minds. "We didn't realize how many people were hurting here," said Paschal recently as she sat in the kitchen of one of several houses in the Street Ministry complex in Austell. The Marietta resident says in the beginning there were several donated houses county-wide. However, she wanted everybody together for obvious reasons. For many years …
Friday, March 16, 2012
Five-year-old Savannah Grace Benton of Marietta has been in seven charity pageants and will be in the Miss Diamond Princess pageant this month to raise money for 3-year-old Addison, who was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in January.
Five-year-old Savannah Grace Benton isn't just playing dress-up for fun. She's getting her hair and makeup done by a stylist, putting on a themed dress and walking onto stages for a crown and to make the world a better place. Grace has been in seven pageants, but not just any pageants—charity pageants. From Miss Puppy Love, for which she raised 200 pet items and dog food in bags bigger than herself, to the Crowns for a Cure, in which she raised $100 for cancer patients in honor of her aunt, Grace has been dressing up, helping her community and having fun in pageants most of her life. Grace entered her first pageant, Crowns for a Cure, when she was 18 months old. "She seemed to like it a lot, so we decided to stick with it," said Grace's …
Katheryn Preston
10:35 pm on Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Dr Michael Good is number one in my book. We first met when he had just graduated from veternarin school and I worked for a Community Treatment Center for Teens. We had a cat that hung around the center and came in one day mangled. I picked up the cat and walked two doors down to the veternian office where he worked to ask if they could help our poor kitty...he took the kitty and nursed him well … more ›