Unite For The Cure » Strong

The Strong Family: Golf For A Cure Tournament Raises $6,000+

stronwi — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:49:38 +0000

On November 20, 2009, Gwendolyn Strong’s amazing Gramma (Bill’s mom) and their dear friends, Jeff and Kris Hanson, hosted the First Annual Golf For A Cure tournament at Sterling Hills Golf Club in Camarillo, California to benefit the Strong’s Unite For The Cure commitment. The tournament was a ton of fun on an absolutely beautiful day and was a huge success raising over $6,000 for Dr. Keirstead’s promising SMA stem cell program.

Here’s what Gwendolyn’s Gramma had to say about the day:

The Golf For A Cure tournament was more than I could have ever expected. Hoping to get 18 tee sponsors — we got 30! Hoping to get 40 golfers — we got 80! And we had such a good time that day from start to finish. It was truly an uplifting and exhilarating day. Not only did we raise awareness of SMA but we exceeded our fundraising goal as well. It is a wonderful feeling knowing we accomplished so much through one simple event, Golf For A Cure!

The Strong Family: Strike Down SMA

Victoria Strong — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:00:41 +0000

Strike Down SMA was a super fun event and raised $2,325 for Unite For The Cure!!! The Foglias, longtime friends of the Strong family, organized everything at the Bowling Center at the Orleans Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. They gathered friends and family and created a fun night out for a good cause. They had t-shirts made, created a raffle, and, with it being Las Vegas, even included friendly wagers, which upped the ante and the antics as the wagers became sillier throughout the night. Here is what Heather had to say about the night:

We had so much fun last night! Strike Down SMA brought out about 25 wonderful people with lots of others sending contributions toward the goal. Everyone was so great. We had the bowling participation and then Shaina had a variety of bottles of alcohol donated for a raffle. (She knew how to get people involved!) People made little side bets on bowling frames and ran over to apply their winnings toward the raffle. Too funny to watch. Overall, it was a great time with friends and family and we wish you could have been there to see the shenanigans.

We wish we could have, too. Thank you so much for doing this for us and for SMA.

The Strong Family: Strike Down SMA Bowling Fundraiser

stronwi — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:00:53 +0000

The Strongs of California have some amazingly supportive friends. Their dear friends in Las Vegas, Nevada have organized a Unite For The Cure bowling fundraiser called “Strike Down SMA”. Here’s how they describe the event:

Join us for an evening of fun, friends and good old competition to raise money for Unite for The Cure. The Strong family is on a mission to raise $5,000 by November 2009 to go directly to promising scientific research for SMA. We want to help contribute as much as we can to this goal. Here’s the plan: meet us at the Orleans Bowling Lanes on Saturday, October 17^th at 8:00 p.m. For $20 upon arrival (cash, please), all participants will get rental shoes and two games, plus $10 will go straight to the cause. The top four scorers will then participate in the ultimate bowling championship, wherein friendly wagers (donated in their entirety) are welcome and encouraged. Come out for a night of fun times and support a very worthy cause.

What a great event and what wonderful friends. Have fun!

The Strong Family: ShopToEndSMA.com

stronwi — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:00:56 +0000

The Strong family of California launched a simple way for ANYONE to help raise funding for SMA without ever taking a cent out of their own pocket. It’s called ShopToEndSMA.com and it’s a project of the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation.

We all shop online. And now, through ShopToEndSMA.com, we can continue to shop at all of our favorite online stores and know that a generous %, sometimes as high as 50%!, of our normal, every day shopping dollars will be going to benefit SMA! And now through the end of November 2009, the Strongs will be donating 100% of the proceeds from ShopToEndSMA.com to Unite For The Cure.

Here are two super duper simple ways that you can Shop To End SMA:

Go through ShopToEndSMA.com directly:

Ready to buy that perfume from Sephora?
Go to ShopToEndSMA.com
Click on “Merchants”
Search for “Sephora”
Click on it
Click on “Shop now” and you’ll be taken directly to the Sephora website
Buy your perfume just as you normally would through Sephora and, not only get your new pretty smelling perfume, but feel great knowing that a % of your purchase just went to help SMA awareness and research!
That’s it!

Download the browser “reminder” plugin:

Because ShopToEndSMA.com has so many online stores as partners, by downloading the plugin you will never miss an opportunity to put your normal online shopping dollars to work towards SMA awareness and research. Follow the steps below to download the browser “reminder” plugin, do your online shopping as you normally would and you’ll be automatically reminded when ShopToEndSMA.com will benefit from your purchase. It’s super simple!

Go to ShopToEndSMA.com
Click on “Downloads”
Scroll down
The plugin works with either Internet Explorer or Firefox. Decide which version you need, check the box to accept the Software License
Click “Download” and follow the instructions
That’s it!

Online merchants participating in ShopToEndSMA.com include Amazon, Sephora, Babies R Us, Barnes & Noble, Bloomingdales, Crocs, Diapers.com, EBay, Macys, Office Depot, Old Navy, Target, Staples, Shutterfly, W Hotels, Walmart, the list goes…on…and…on — basically most places you already shop.

So, get to shopping and put your online shopping dollars to work to END SMA once and for all!

Bill, Victoria, and Gwendolyn Strong, uniting for the cure!

stronwi — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:11:10 +0000

Meet Bill, Victoria, and Gwendolyn Strong of California. In August 2009, the Strongs launched Unite For The Cure as a way to organize and motivate the SMA community around one simple goal: to collectively raise $100,000 to enable the promising SMA stem cell program led by Dr. Keirstead at UC Irvine to get to and through human clinical trials as efficiently as possible.

Why have the Strongs decided to unite for the cure?

Bill and Victoria Strong live in Santa Barbara, California with their daughter, Gwendolyn. Gwendolyn was born perfectly healthy in October 2007, but was diagnosed with SMA Type I at 6-months-old. The Strongs are passionate about raising awareness of SMA and their foundation, the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, is centered on funding research that is solely focused on curing this cruel disease. In July 2008, they started PetitionToCureSMA.com, an online petition in support of legislation that would help organize resources around the extremely mature SMA research community — to date, their petition has received over 70,000 signatures. In August 2009, the Strongs started “Tweet For A Cure” (EndSMA.org/twitter), as a simple way for people to Tweet their Congresspeople about the SMA Treatment Acceleration Act — to date, over 2,500 people have Tweeted their Congresspeople reaching over 1.5 Million Twitter followers. Bill and Victoria feel fortunate to have met with Dr. Hans Keirstead in July 2009 and were astounded by his accomplishments, his research, his facility, and the very real potential of his groundbreaking efforts ending SMA once and for all. The Strongs wholeheartedly believe this clinical trial will lead to a cure — IF given the funding — and they created Unite For The Cure in August 2009 to motivate the SMA community to band together to make certain that funding is not an obstacle to seeing this promising research to and through human clinical trial as quickly as possible. Uniting with others to take funding out of the equation is simple — in comparison to the devastation caused by SMA. And, Gwendolyn’s bright spark is a constant motivator to continue fighting for that cure.