Word-Up Ya'll: Talk Trash for a Rockin' Cause

Just sharing the latest and greatest on our female blogger collaboration with Operation: Kid Equip - Word-Up - a trash talkin' tennis tourney for a cause!

On Saturday, Feb. 27th, from 9-11 p.m. at the Birmingham Racquet Club, area bloggers and social media enthusiasts will step out from behind the safety of their monitors and iPhones to face off. For a group of Detroiters accustomed to scrapping out turf in the cyber world by skillfully lobbing poignant barbs, placing the perfect spin on headlines and relying on the fastest servers, the opportunity to see who rises to the top in a face-to-face battle of good ole' fashion trash talk was too much to resist.

All proceeds from the event will go to Operation: Kid Equip to help complete their mission of arming area third graders with dictionaries. We're currently raising funds for Hazel Park and need your help!

Sign up here to play, attend, support or sponsor Word-Up. You may as well, cuz if you don't, we'll just talk trash about you anyway!

If you're curious as to how this will work, just check out the event's Facebook page.

*Warning: Trash talk will be flying at this event and is more than likely to land out of bounds at times. All attendees, playing or not, should arrive with well-padded egos.*

Pre-event registration prices range from $10-$30, but feel free to make a donation if you aren't able to attend. Door prices are $10 more per ticket (depending on availability).

Now, I don't play tennis, but this will definitely be something worth seeing, or shall I say hearing? Crazy 70's gear is encouraged, so bring out the tube socks and shorty shorts!

WORD-UP!

Angry (or happy?) Andy Roddick photo cred.

Dictionary Project Update: Some Delivered, but Still a Great Need

There we were. Standing in the library of John F. Kennedy elementary school in Ferndale when all of the sudden...massive amounts of 3rd graders come at us.

This only means one thing: we reached our goal of being able to provide dictionaries to every third grader in the Ferndale school district!

Last Wednesday, the gals from the Operation: Kid Equip (OKE) female blogger collaboration and Menachem, the co-founder and brains behind OKE came together to deliver dictionaries to our first school.

The experience was nothing short of amazing. The principal announced us and explained to the children that we were sharing our passion for writing with them by giving them a great tool - a dictionary.

The children crowded around us, each getting up to receive a dictionary of their very own. We received many thanks, but the cutest of all were all the HUGS we received. Once seated again, the students thumbed through the book, which was easy to navigate for a 3rd grader and they all quickly found other nuggets of wisdom in the book such as sign language and the longest word known to man. I showed a little girl how I sign my name and encouraged her to learn how to sign her own name and then look up words in the dictionary and figure out how to sign those. Here she is signing away:

Following the distribution, the principal asked the students how receiving a dictionary made them feel inside and the students were quick to raise their hands to share: excited, happy and LOVED. To think a simple act of giving away a dictionary could make a child feel loved was the best feeling ever. We all departed feeling pretty darn good about ourselves.

The need train doesn't stop here though. We still need to distribute many more dictionaries to area children. And our next stop is Hazel Park, an Oakland County city that has been hit very hard by the economy.

To those asking "Why Oakland County and not Detroit proper?" listen up:
Oakland County is often noted as one of the "richest" counties in the state. However, that really isn't true these days -- not in Michigan's economy especially. However, because of this notion, many times children in Oakland County are overlooked. As OKE's research has shown, many school districts have gone up dramatically in the past few years with the school's free and reduced lunch program, which generally is an indicator of the need. One district in dire need is Hazel Park, which has recently surpassed Pontiac's need.

Helping out is simple. For a $20 donation, you can supply eight third graders with dictionaries.

1. Click here to make a PayPal donation.

2. Mail a check to:
Operation: Kid Equip
P.O. Box 364
Royal Oak, MI 48068-0364
*Write Dictionary Project in the memo line*

3. Contact menachem[at]operationkidequip.org to make a credit card or other form of payment.

So on this Martin Luther King Day as we reflect on how our country has progressed through the years, let us also reflect on something very important he said many years ago:

Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?'

Special props to the other Detroit-area bloggers making this possible: Erin Rose of Positive Detroit, Becks Davis of Detroit Moxie, Nikki Stephan of Creativity, Love, Happiness & All That Falls Between and Jennifer Wright of Looking Glass Lane. If you'd like to join the collaboration, contact Erin at positivedetroit[at]gmail.com.

Thanks to Becks Davis of Detroit Moxie for the adorable photo in the middle of the girl with the dictionary.