Are you thinking of eating at Willow St Pizza in Willow Glen tomorrow for lunch or dinner?
Please print the flyer (link below), when you present it to your server Willow St Pizza will donate 20% of the sale to Team Willow Glen.
How painless is that? You get great Pizza and pasta and all for a good cause!

I Promise this is the last request for help for Team Willow Glen this year.
We’ve almost reached our fundraising goals and we’d love to see you at Willow St Pizza Thursday June 18 to support the team and help needy souls get the treatment they need. .

Here’s the link to download the flyer. Good ONLY for lunch or dinner June 18, 2009
http://www.bestofwillowglen.com/avon/WillowStreet.pdf
If you can, print a few flyers and spread the love, we need all the help we can get.

Here are some of the items available in the silent auction to raise money for Team Willow Glen!

The auction itself will take place at Elva’s Coffee Stop at 2206 Lincoln Ave, San Jose, Ca.

All items (or their descriptions) will be on display at Elva’s and we will post lists of items on the blog with images and estimated values whenever possible. You may bid on items at any time. Stop by the Coffee Stop to see what’s new or watch this blog space as new items are added. All bids must be placed in person at Elva’s Coffee Stop.

Bids on all items closes June 15, 2009.
On June 16 winning bidders will be notified and will have 1 week to pick up their items and pay for them. If items are not picked up by the end of one week they will go to the next highest bidder.

Can you donate an item to the auction?
If you have services or items to donate, please bring them to the Coffee Stop or email Janet to add it to the list.

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Do you love jewelry? Designer shoes and handbags? It’s a Girl Thing has generously offered to donate 10% of all sales on Saturday May 30 to Team Willow Glen. They’ll also be accepting donations for the team.

So, if you love girly things, or you know somebody who does, get down to It’s a Girl Thing on Saturday and buy something lovely for a good cause! The store is in the shopping center at Bird and Willow, tucked back in the corner near Scott’s Video.

860 Willow St. #400,San Jose, CA 95125

Here’s a map:

Elva Acevedo is walking with the team again this year and has graciously agreed to host a silent auction to raise funds for the team. We’re asking team members and members of the community to chip in with items for the auction or cash donations to help us surpass last year’s funds of $20,000 for breast cancer treatment and research.

How it’s going to work
The auction itself will take place at Elva’s Coffee Stop at 2206 Lincoln Ave, San Jose, Ca.

All items (or their descriptions) will be on display at Elva’s and we will post lists of items on the blog with images and estimated values whenever possible. You may bid on items at any time. Stop by the Coffee Stop to see what’s new or watch this blog space as new items are added. All bids must be placed in person at Elva’s Coffee Stop.

Bids on all items closes June 15, 2009.
On June 16 winning bidders will be notified and will have 1 week to pick up their items and pay for them. If items are not picked up by the end of one week they will go to the next highest bidder.

Can you donate an item to the auction?
If you have services or items to donate, please bring them to the Coffee Stop or email Janet to add it to the list.

The Avon Walk for Breast Cancer is the foundations’s largest annual fundraising initiative. I can’t speak for the whole Team Willow Glen, but I chose to do the Avon Walk because of the organizations they help and the way the funds are distributed. In the last 5 years the Avon walks raised more than $265 million and $60 million of that was from last years’ walk.

When you look at where the majority of these funds are going you quickly see the money is not going just to research, but to help people who might not even get treatment for financial or cultural reasons. Like many who have been touched by this disease in some way, I can’t imagine what it would be like to go through the treatments alone, or not to have the money to get the right treatments.

Everybody knows that fundraising this year is at an all-time low and many non-profits are struggling for every penny. Just to give you an idea of why you should give whatever you can to support the walk, here are a few of the local (San Francisco Bay Area) organizations who have received funds from the Avon walk.

San Francisco General Hospital
Created the Avon Comprehensive Breast Care Center with the funding from the walk, as well as a mobile mammography van, a high-risk genetic clinic, and community outreach and breast cancer research programs.

Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic
Expanded the delivery of free alternative medicine, social services, and holistic health to extremely low-income women in the San Francisco Bay and Oakland areas. 75 percent of patients served are women of color; 40 percent speak little or no English and all are below the 200 percent poverty level.

Project Open Hand
Funds will expand their Homebound Critically Ill Program that provides meals and education programs for breast cancer patients and other critically ill patients. Funds also support an innovative “grocery program” for breast cancer clients, particularly focused on Chinese breast cancer patients.

Zero Breast Cancer
Founded in 1995 by a group of concerned Marin County residents who wanted to know why so many of their friends were afflicted with breast cancer. The participate in research studies including Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Center, Prospective Study of Breast Cancer Survivorship in the Bay Area, and a project to develop a Bay Area Geographic Information System (GIS).

Here’s the team walking so far. If you’d like to join us let me know. The more the merrier! Click on a link to donate to an individual. Whatever you can give will make a difference in so many lives.

• Elva Acevedo
• Rachel Boltz
• CJ Brasiel
• Janet Fouts
• Cheryll Getsinger
• Corina Ramirez

Here we go again! Avon Walk 2009 San Francisco will be on July 11 and 12 and we will walk just short of 40 miles up and down the famous hills of San Francisco.

We’re just lining up the team this year, so if you’d like to participate. email Janet to get on the team. If you’d like to donate to the team members, click their names on the right, and if you have some fundrasiing ideas, Janet would love to hear ‘em!

The

We did it! The Avon walk was an amazing experience and Willow Glen was well represented with Team Willow Glen members and a whole bunch of local residents who weren’t on the team.
The first day started out with some moving tributes and the announcement that we had raised over 7.5 million dollars for the Avon Foundation. This year is a new record for the San Francisco walk!

See all the pictures so far. We’d love to have more. Email yours and I’ll add them.

I’m not going to go into a long emotional post here (that would be SO easy to do). Let’s just say that the entire experience was emotionally uplifting, exhausting, amazing and wonderful. CJ and I walked together with Elva almost the entire walk, and it was a lot of fun to see all of the people who came up to her to say hi and cheer on our local celebrity. One of her biggest fan clubs is (of course) the San Jose volunteer cops who had a huge impact on the walk itself. These gals and guys were on their bikes traveling back and forth the entire route and making sure everybody was safe, having fun and encouraging us to keep moving forward. They really gave San Jose a good name ,and more than once helped us shlog up yet another hill with their cheering and teasing. I’m guessing that each of them did more than 50 miles/day on those bikes.

I can’t count the number of times I heard people say how great the support of the cops, the motorcycle support crew, the volunteers and just plain people on the sidewalks were. As we walked down the streets people put out banners and balloons, waved from their windows, honked their horns, handed out water or snacks and generally supported in any way they could.

It was pretty amazing how many people we ran into. With so many walkers we thought we’d never see the rest of the team, but we did walk with Cheryll for most of the first day until our blisters held us back and Cheryll and Elva left us in the dust! We also ran into Corina and Merry just after we crossed the bridge, and walked with then for a bit before we got separated by the crowds. Getting on that bus at the 15 mile mark was a huge relief, and we decided finishing the next day was our goal rather than to kill ourselves on the first day and not finish. When we got the the Wellness camp, there was Charlotte, just off the bus ahead of us.

Day 2 started a little late for us, but we picked up near the end of the line and did our best to overcome the aches and pains from the previous day. It seems like the route on the second day was created with a sadistic twist. We climbed a LOT of hills, just in case people forgot we we in San Francisco. Potrero Hill was probably the worst, but the reward was to come down the hill and be greeted by some of the recipients of funds from the walk, ranging from the Avon Breast Care Center to smaller support organizations like the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic (Oakland and San Francisco, CA) where seventy-five percent of patients served are women of color; 40% speak little or no English; and all are below the poverty level.

We walked through a lot of my favorite neighborhoods of San Francisco, got a lot of encouragement from the support teams and people who lived in the neighborhood and finally dragged ourselves across the finish line in Golden Gate Park about 3 PM. Yes, the walk was long, but we kept reminding ourselves that it’s nothing compared to what men and women who are going through radiation, chemo, surgery and recovery are going through every hour of every day. One of the things that really moved me as we walked was listening to snippets of the stories of those around us. People walking for lost loved ones, telling their stories of diagnosis or caring for their cherished friend or family as they went through treatment. It really hits home that almost no-one has not been touched by this disease in some way, and it was clear as we walked through the neighborhoods that people on the street supported us in the name of someone they knew as well.

Merry, Corina, Cheryll, Charlotte, CJ and I (Janet) did at least 30 miles, but Elva is the team hero. She did the whole 40 miles!

I can’t express how much we appreciated the support of each and every donor who supported us financially and by helping us raise funds for this walk. I’ll be posting the beneficiary list on the site soon so you can see where your money is going.

Want to know the official news? Download the press release from the foundation.

Zometa, a bone density improvement drug made by Novartis , may be helpful in preventing recurrence of breast cancer. A recent study shows that the drug may make the bones less hospitable to cancer. It was discovered because many of the drugs used in chemotherapy weaken the bones and testing was being done with bone strengthening drugs to try to reverse that process.

“Hugely important is whether this has to do with the fact that it just makes the bone hostile, somehow, to metastasis or if there is a more global anti-metastasis effect,” said the oncology group’s president, Dr. Nancy Davidson of the Johns Hopkins University.

The Avon Foundation supports research in these areas, and many others, and this is where the money we have raised is going, as well as to help men and women who have already been diagnosed get the treatment they need! Team Willow Glen has raised over $17,000 for the foundation so far. Keep up the good work!

Spend an afternoon at Chef Yung Le’s  Fusion , dining on an eclectic menu paired with some truly fine wines. 6 courses and 6 wines will be served and the wines poured will be available for sale after the dinner.   As each wine is poured we’ll talk about how the wine and food go together and about the wineries as well. 50% of the proceeds to go to the Avon Foundation on the behalf of Team Willow Glen.
Chef Yung Le is a talented chef, and this promises to be a wonderful event.  Please join us for this wonderful event.

Here’s the basic information, and if it is possible for you to help us distribute flyers for the event, we’d appreciate it. Here’s a link to a downloadable PDF of the flyer for the event. Please print a copy and help spread the news for this event!

Event Details:
Date: May 18, 2008
Time: 1-3 PM
$60 Per Person
Location: 1317 Winchester Blvd. San Jose, CA
For reservations call (408) 379-5095

Reservations limited to 50 people, get yours today.

We’ve gotten quite a few items from team members as well as people in the neighborhood who generously donated goods for the yard sale this week. Help spread the word, and pass this on to naybody you think will be interested. We’ve got:  Computers and Electronics  Collectibles and antiquesToys, games and booksCookbooksVideos and DVDsTball stand with bucket of baseballs and glove  Kitchen and household items  Clothing and decorative pillows  Golf Bag, suitcases3 in 1game table (Pool, Air Hockey and table tennis) All proceeds go to the Avon Foundation which provides funding to men and women with breast cancer and breast cancer research and treatment centers.  DETAILS: 1985 Coastland Ave, San Jose, 95125  Saturday May 3 from 8 to  No early salesDonations gladly accepted.