You may have noticed that our homepage has a new look — we welcome Nicole Forester and Robert Newman from Guiding Light as our PEOPLE WHO CARE this November and feature their nonprofit partners, Points Of Light & Hands On Network, as our default nonprofit beneficiaries throughout the month. We wanted to focus on community service at this time of the year because so many people, coast to coast, need the kind of help that these volunteer networks provide. While the approaching holiday season does tend to bring out the spirit of giving in most of us, hunger, homelessness and poverty continue to be serious issues both here and abroad. The cast of Guiding Light has formed a lasting relationship with Points Of Light & Hands On Network – a partnership called Find Your Light, that has taken them across the nation, engaged them in a number of community projects and has made lasting impressions on the cast members in having done so. They began their Find Your Light campaign the week January of 22 – 26, 2007 by taking the entire cast and crew to the Gulf Coast to help rebuild homes devastated by Hurricane Katrina and participate in other volunteer activities throughout the surrounding region. Guiding Light’s crew filmed cast members at work in the Gulf Coast and viewers were given the opportunity to see the results in a special episode that aired on Wednesday, February 14, 2007. Since that time the cast has been actively involved in various projects through Points Of Light & Hands On Network affiliates in Atlanta, New York, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Miami and Baltimore to name but a few. Take a look at this recent group shot…
- Guiding Light is a Guinness World Record holder for being the longest-running show in broadcast history, 70 years!
- Always ahead of the curve, it first debuted on radio in 1937, transitioned to television in 1952 and became the first television show to podcast audio only episodes in 2005.
- To date, Guiding Light has aired more than 15,000 episodes on the CBS Television Network and nearly 18,000 episodes overall.
- And my favorite — Created by Irna Phillips, Guiding Light was – and continues to be – produced by Procter & Gamble Productions, the company who put the word SOAP in ‘soap opera’.
For those of you who are new to the site and wonder who might have been our past PEOPLE WHO CARE, we’ve implemented a new feature in the top navigation bar that’s called PEOPLE WHO CARE where you can find archived information. As this is only our second consecutive installment, it’s a pretty short list — we want to thank Rene Syler again for sharing a part of her life journey with us during October’s feature highlighting Breast Cancer Awareness. Not only is she an awesome ambassador for Susan G. Komen for the Cure, she’s a bright, witty writer with a very real approach to mothering in today’s hectic, multi-tasking, fast lane of parenting. As a mother who falls into the aforementioned category, I highly suggest picking up a copy of her book Good Enough Mother. While this might sound like a shameless plug for what we do – I’d like you to think of the following instructions more as a tutorial. First, go to SHOP THE MALL, choose BOOKS, MUSIC + MORE from the left hand directory and go to BOOKS. Hers’ is now carried at Barnes & Noble, click on their icon, find the book, buy it and get ready to laugh a lot and cry just a little. While you’re waiting for the book to arrive, go to www.goodenoughmother.com, read her blog, get caught up in the conversation and Share Your GEMstones with other Good Enough Mothers. When you have children, you’ve got GEMstones – trust me on this one.