It didn’t take long for all of us at Casey Cares to realize we were not in Baltimore anymore!
Our Casey Cares 17th Annual “Emerald City” Gala took us over the rainbow and was an incredible event from start to finish. Beginning with a cocktail hour with an appearance by Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh to amazing food, drinks, dancing and live music, the evening ended with a lot of happy guests --- a sold-out crowd of more than 400 people!
The event included amazing live and silent auction items --- destination trips to Argentina, Ireland and Italy and VIP tickets to a concert at the TODAY show in New York City --- were just some of the incredible items on hand to bid upon during the evening. Many of our guests got into the spirit of the theme. We even had some flying monkeys in the crowd!
Casey Cares also announced that PANDORA at The Gallery at Harborplace has created limited-edition charms and proceeds will benefit the Casey Cares Foundation. For more information on this special partnership, click here.
The evening included an incredible video presentation from WMAR/ABC2 News meteorologist and longtime Casey Cares supporter Lynette Charles. We are so glad she broke into our Gala with breaking news about that twister from Kansas! In case you missed it, click here.
Lynette's colleague at WMAR, reporter Megan Knight, and Priestly from MIX 106.5 were fanastic as our evening emcees!
In addition, we showed another video highlighting one of our Casey Cares families. T.J., is an eighth grader at the McDonogh School who tackled a rare brain tumor. The video, created by a wonderful team at TEKsystems, illustrated the journey T.J., his brother, Chidi, and parents, have gone through and how much Casey Cares has supported all of them throughout his cancer treatment. We were especially grateful that one of his doctors from Children’s National Medical Center, Dr. Brian Rood, was able to come in from Washington, D.C., to share in our Gala celebration.
The best news of all is that the week before our Gala, T.J. got the great news that he is in remission!
Please take a moment to watch this video.
Casey Cares founder and executive director Casey Baynes, dressed in a sparkly emerald green gown, presented our annual Champion of Children Awards to the Baltimore Ravens and to Wanda Smith, president and founder of Symphony Placements.
“The Baltimore Ravens continue to give our families plenty to cheer about every year by having our families as VIP guests at training camp, providing tickets to pre-season and regular-season games, connecting children in our programs with players, and sending team mascot, Poe, to events in our community,” Casey said.
“Wanda Smith runs a very strong team of her own at Symphony Placements, a company she founded and which runs like a fine-tuned machine,” Casey added. “She has been very active with a variety of our programs and is the chair of one of our largest fundraisers, our Golf Tournament, set for June 19 at the Hunt Valley Golf Course. Wanda hosts an amazing holiday party and has given back to Casey Cares time and again.”
Casey Cares wants to thank our Gala co-chairs, Bob Weltchek and Todd Travis, for once again running an incredible Gala. These wizards behind the scenes have put in so many hours to make this Gala bigger and better every year.
We also want to thank our top sponsors, The National Association for Affordable Housing Solutions, Inc., Weltchek, Mallahan and Weltchek, CohnReznick, EagleBank, Nixon Peabody, TEKsystems, Volpe Technology, Berger’s Cookies, St. John Properties, Kramon and Graham Attorneys and Chesapeake Urology.
Thanks also goes to our top media sponsors: Mix 106.5, WPOC and iHeartRadio, The Baltimore Sun Media Group, the Baltimore Business Journal, Clear Channel Outdoor, Yelp Baltimore, WCBM 680 and Q1370, AHA Business Radio, Downtown Diane, Citypeek and HeidNSeek Entertainment.
A special shout out goes to Small Miracle and Tom Reyes and Friends for sharing their musical talents with us at our Gala, and Atlantic Caterers did a wonderful job with our catering.
Casey Cares also wants to thank Brian Wasser of Electric Entertainment and Nina K Photography. Keep checking back on our website for photos from our Gala!
Thank you to everyone for your continued support for Casey Cares, our programs, and most of all, the kids and families we serve --- nearly 800 families this year alone! If you could not make it to our Gala and want to make a donation, please do now!
