NYSD Philanthropy - Safe Horizon

NYSD Philanthropy entries:

• Children for Children

• City Harvest (1)

• City Harvest (2)

• Hurricane Katrina

• Lenox Hill Neighborhood House

• Metropolitan Opera Guild

• Safe Horizon

• Southampton Fresh Air Home

• TAPS

SAFE HORIZON

Safe Horizon celebrated their upcoming 10th Annual Champion Awards with over 300 guests at a cocktail reception three weeks ago on a Thursday night at the Calvin Klein Collection store on Madison Avenue. The evening’s glamorous hostesses – Mariska Hargitay, Stephanie March and Malaak Compton-Rock greeted the stellar crowd wearing pieces from the Spring 2005 Calvin Klein collection naturally. Then there was the just as glam-bam host committee Grace Hightower DeNiro, Muffie Potter Aston, Debbie Bancroft, Cynthia Lufkin, Celery Kemble, Tinsley Mortimer, Somers Farkas, Zani Gugelman, Ashley Stark, Melissa Berkelhammer, Nick Raynes, Pamela Hootkin, Malcolm Carfrae, Kim Vernon, Annie Churchill and Gillian Hearst-Shaw who arrived with her sister model Lydia Hearst.

The theme for the evening was butterflies and blue, guests enjoyed something-or-other Blue vodka and light-as-butterflies hors d’oeuvres provided by Taste Caterers. It was air-kiss city with this group: Mary McFadden, Dennis Basso, Tony Ingrao and Randy Kemper, Dayssi Olarte de Kanavos, Jill Roosevelt, Jane Hanson, David Ushery, Erica Reid, Tina Louise, Luigi Tadini, Lauren Thierry Watkins, Joanna Mastroianni, Michèle Gerber Klein, Barbara Sussberg, Allison Weiss, Maggie Norris, Joe Cheng, Jill Markiewicz, Lisa Jackson and Stephen Siegel, Harriette Rose Katz, Anne Keating and Cristina Torre from the Joe Torre Safe at Home Foundation. Watching it all unfold with pleasure and delight were several of the Safe Horizon major proponents including CEO Gordon J. Campbell and Safe Horizon Champion Awards Corporate Chair and CEO of J.H. Cohn Thomas Marino, as well as Board Members Jane Randel of Liz Claiborne, José Raúl Pérez of Time Inc., Stephen McCandless, Martin Newman, Esq. and Eugene Pickens. Corporate supporters Jim Butler of USI and Mark Weber of Phillip-Van Heusen Corporation were also in attendance.

Erica Reid, Malaak Compton Rock, and Stephanie March at Safe Horizon's Champion Awards kick off party at Calvin Klein

The main fundraising event will be the Annual Championship Awards luncheon held on May 10th at the 69th Regiment Armory, which will honor New York Yankee’s Manager Joe Torre and his wife Ali who will receive the 2005 Champion Award, along with Catherine Hawas, a Safe Horizon client who’s lived it, lived to tell about the barbaric shame and horror of domestic violence and will receive this year’s Liz Claiborne Champion Award.

Founded in 1978, Safe Horizon is something that everyone should know about. It is the nation’s leading non-profit victims’ assistance organization. Their mission is to provide support, prevent violence and promote justice for victims of crime and abuse, their families and communities. This is a tall order for an enormous and most often unspoken-about problem in this country today.

This is a problem that affects far more people, in all socio-economic brackets than most are willing to admit. In families, the horror is associated with guilt, shame and deprivation. I’ll never forget the story I heard about the wife of a very prominent lawyer who was beaten on the head with a hammer by her husband. So great was her distress, after she miraculously survived his hideous savage onslaught that she went to their summer home and killed herself. He’s still practicing today, blithely unaware that there are a lot of people out there who know what a bully, fool, murderer and continuing menace to society that he is.

However, there are a lot of brave and heroic people out there working to assist the legions of victims. For more than a quarter century, Safe Horizon has provided people in crises with immediate practical assistance and emotional support. Their skilled and compassionate staff serves 350,000 New Yorkers each year, acting as advocate for those undergoing trauma as a result of crime and abuse. Safe Horizon’s pioneering achievements and innovative programs are now recognized as models for communities and organizations.

More than 800 of New York’s corporate, civic and social leaders will come together to salute these heroes and celebrate Safe Horizon’s 26 years of service to New Yorkers. Please call 212-577-5095 for information and tickets or visit www.safehorizon.org.

Safe Horizon Champion Awards kick off party at the Calvin Klein Collection store