Bloomingdale's and Mentoring USA Celebrate 11 Years of Partnership
18:44PM on April 13 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACTS: Liz McGovern / Sasha Soyfer
Bloomingdale's National Media Relations
212-705-2443 / 212-705-TK
liz.mcgovern@bloomingdales.com
sasha.soyfer@bloomingdales.com
Bloomingdale's & Mentoring USA Celebrate 11 Years of Partnership
PS 59 to Help Unveil 8th Annual Window Collaboration at 59th Street
Evoking Rights of Passage
January 2009, New York, NY . . . To celebrate National Mentoring Month and the belief that mentoring encourages children to let their dreams take flight, Bloomingdale's will unveil a special window designed in collaboration with the students of New York's PS 59 on Friday, January 9 at 8:45 a.m. on Lexington Avenue at 60th Street.
Bloomingdale's volunteers have, for the past eleven years, mentored elementary school children at PS 59 through the Mentoring USA program. Currently more than 70 store executives spend one hour each week with their mentees, talking, sharing, tutoring, and encouraging the kids to dream big for their future.
The window, to be unveiled by Bloomingdale's chairman and CEO, Michael Gould, and Mentoring USA Founder & Chair, Matilda Raffa Cuomo, will feature two mentors-a man and woman-pulling the string of a kite and instructing a group of children how to fly their kites. Featured on the back wall of the window will be 70 paintings by the third-grade mentees of PS 59. Each kite-shaped painting will feature the child's aspirations-to be President, doctor, lawyer, etc-or a self-portrait with their mentor. The unveiling will be followed by a "thank you" breakfast for the children in the store's famous "Forty Carrots" café on the seventh floor.
"People who give of their time to mentor a child are true heroes," said Matilda Raffa Cuomo, Founder & Chair of Mentoring USA. "Mentoring is an investment in a child's future that reaps a lifetime of benefits. We value our longstanding partnership with Bloomingdale's and salute their commitment to this important initiative."
"Mentoring is one of those rare experiences in life that is self-enriching and yet provides an even greater kind of enrichment - helping a child," said Michael Gould. "We are proud to continue our long-standing partnership with Mentoring USA, the city's largest site-based, one-to-one mentoring program again this year."
Bloomingdale's is America's only nationwide, full-line, upscale department store; and a division of Macy's, Inc. It was founded in 1872 and currently operates 40 stores in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia, Florida, Nevada and California. For more information, or to shop any time, visit http://www.bloomingdales.com/.
Mentoring USA, a New York City-based nonprofit, is a structured, site-based, mentoring organization that began as the first state-sponsored, one-on-one mentoring program in the country back in 1987. The program was founded by then First Lady of the State of New York, Matilda Raffa Cuomo and became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 1995. Mentoring USA has provided mentors for more than 5,000 children since its inception.
