Festa Parties, in conjunction with its sibling company, Great To Be Here T-Shirts, has donated 325 T-Shirts to Girl Talk, a program for Young Girls that offers peer-to-peer mentoring for middle school girls. We donated our Southern Girl tees to their Project Inside Out camp in Georgia, as well as some Florida Girl tees.  These new fashion tees had a retail value of over $6,400 and should make a great treat for the young ladies at the camp.

Girl Talk offers free peer-to-peer mentoring to over 35,000 young girls in 43 states and 6 countries. They would love for you to visit their website.

Design of Southern Girl Tees donated to Girl Talk

More about Girl Talk and Project Inside Out:

Girl Talk offers weekly mentoring that offers positive meetings, community service projects and friendship building activities for middle school girls. It is led by positive high school girls who serve as their mentors. Their goal is to help these young girls build self-esteem, gain leadership skills that they can use throughout their lives. The program is free and it truly wants to make a difference in the lives of middle school girls! Last year Girl Talk girls and leaders completed more than 312,000 community service hours.

The tees donated by Great to Be Here Tees will be used for Project Inside Out – Girl Talk’s Summer Camp for Middle School Girls! This is an Atlanta based camp and there are two week long sessions of camp in which the middle school girls build self confidence, meet new girls and make new friends and will hear from keynote speakers, high school counselors and have “impact sessions” which involve activities and crafts. They also learn the importance of giving back by participating in a camp wide community service project!

The demographics of the campers are very broad – many campers attend on a full scholarship and are sponsored by individual donors and organizations! Girl Talk believes that middle school is such a critical age of development, they feel it is important for the campers to be around girls of all backgrounds so they learn to accept others and realize that they have more in common with each other than not!

Youth that are mentored are 46% less likely to use illegal drugs, 27% less likely to use alcohol and 52% less likely to skip school!

On Saturday, March 3 2012, from 8:00AM to 9:06PM, the 7 members of the Festa Parties Team completed the 2012 Chicago Dance Marathon Charity Event benefiting Childrens’ Memorial Hospital. We would like to thank EVERYONE who generously pledged to our team of participants, and of course, thank the 7 members of our team, including Former #1 Tracey Kiefer, Kelli Murphy, Christina Miller, Jessica Harrison, Mark Riemann, and Samantha Elliott. As of the completion of the event, the combined teams raised $312,847.00 and counting!

The event was held at the Renaissance Hotel in Downtown Chicago, and featured lots of great music (LMFAO, anyone?? Like 100 times!!!), fun entertainment, trips to Starbucks, Sugar-Free Red Bull, and thanks to Tracey, our hourly progress photo as we finally made it to the end!  Though many of the young ladies on our team are fabulous dancers, Mr. Festa, not wanting to scare the children, eschewed the dance floor but instead contributed 200 pushups throughout the course of the day and is just now regaining use of his arms!  Thanks also to Tracey and Christina who also participated on our team in 2011, and thanks as well to Royal Court Member Katie Kormann, who participated on her team with Citizen Bar, and to Morgan Rohrbach, who has been our tireless and super-energetic liaison with the event, and helped us round up so many of the volunteers who Bar Hosted for TBOX 2010 and TBOX 2011, and will be on board for TBOX2012!  Festa Parties was proud to participate and also to serve as a Silver Sponsor of this year’s event.

Festa Parties - Chicago Dance Marathon Team, March 3, 2012

Hey Everyone…….. How would you like to PRE-PARTY IT UP for St. Patrick’s Day on Friday, March 9th? 

Our friends at Young Irish Fellowship have provided us with 2 complimentary tickets to their 37th Annual FOREVER GREEN St. Patrick’s Day Charity Benefit party at Park West in Lincoln Park. The event goes from 6:30-11pm and features unlimited Miller Lite for you and your guest, along with great entertainment.  The pair of tickets is a $100 value and you can win them if you do this…

Post a picture of yourself in your best St. Patrick’s Day party gear – your best, craziest St. Patrick’s Day party picture – and post it to our Facebook wall by 2pm on MONDAY, MARCH 5.  The Picture with the most likes on our wall will WIN the tickets! 

And, we will pick 2 other ENTHUSIASTIC Pictures with ENTHUSIASTIC Captions and have 2 other prizes of Pairs of Tickets to Our Next Pub Crawl, COVER YOUR BASES 4, on Saturday, April 28th!!!  (Click Here for Cover Your Bases Tickets & Info!)

CLICK HERE FOR OUR FACEBOOK PAGE!!  SEE BELOW FOR OFFICIAL RULES**** Only Entries following rules will be considered!

- Photos must be posted to Festa Parties Facebook Wall
- Most Likes will by 2pm Central Time on Monday will win the prize
- Must be 21 or Over to Enter
- Photo must contain picture of person doing the posting. It’s cool to have 2 people in it and you can split the prize (the 2 tickets)
- Please keep it tasteful, fun, and festive!
- Any disputes or ties will be settled by Festa Parties staff and decisions are final.

Would you like to contribute to a GREAT CAUSE and get a FREE TICKET to Cover Your Bases as a Thanks?  Festa Parties, Silver Sponsor of the Chicago Dance Marathon Benefit, will be fielding a dancing team of Mr. Festa and 8 Royals and Friends for 13.1 hours on Saturday March 3. Donate a Minimum of $12.12 to our Dance Team “STAY ROYAL” and you’ll receive a coupon for a FREE TICKET to COVER YOUR BASES 4 on April 28th!! All Proceeds of your $12.12+ will go to the charity! Offer Good Thru 3/3 – Click the “Support Stay Royal” Link on the Right Side of the Page.  CLICK HERE TO GO DIRECTLY TO DONATION PAGE!

Festa Parties is pleased to announce that we have made a cash donation to a friend and TBOX / Cover Your Bases Crawler participating in the 2012 Polar Plunge Rockford, Benefiting the Special Olympics of Illinois!  As her support for this great cause, she will be diving into a Cold Lake in a State Park in early March!!!

For More Information on the Polar Plunge Rockford, Click The Picture Above!

Festa Parties, in conjunction with its sibling company, Great To Be Here T-Shirts, has donated over 250 pieces of new and gently used clothing to the Mercy Home for Boys & Girls in Chicago. In addition to some brand new infant wear, onesies, kids t-shirts, and womens t-shirts we had in overstock, we have also donated 31 lovely new junior fleece hoodies, along with a number of sweaters, coats, unisex t-shirts, and other outerwear.  We’re confident these garments will be put to great use by this great organization!

Mercy Home offers young people in crisis an opportunity—one that can save their lives, and change their futures.

Visit www.mercyhome.org for more information.  They would also love you to become their Facebook Fan – Click Here!

More About Mercy Home…

Mercy Home for Boys & Girls has been a solution for kids in crisis since 1887. Through its full-time residential, aftercare and community-based mentoring programs, Mercy Home provides nurturing, guidance and opportunity to more than 400 hurting and troubled young women and men every year. At the core of Mercy Home’s mission is its full-time, residential program, which provides a safe and stable home for 134 young people, ages 11 to 21. Young people who have suffered abuse, neglect, poverty and even abandonment receive life-changing therapeutic, academic and vocational support at Mercy Home. A program of aftercare offers these young people continued connection to their Mercy Home family and gives them access to a host of support services after they have transitioned to living outside of the Home—regardless of age or time away. In addition, Mercy Home’s Friends First mentoring program matches at-risk youth who live out in the wider community with much-needed adult role models. Through our admissions process, Mercy Home makes professional referral services available to hundreds more troubled kids in crisis every year who need help, but whose individual needs may be better met at qualified social service programs other than Mercy Home.  Mercy Home for Boys & Girls is a not-for-profit agency that is 99.7% privately funded and operates on two Chicago campuses – a home for boys at 1140 W. Jackson Blvd. and a home for girls at 11600 S. Longwood Drive.

Mercy Home for Children, Chicago

Festa Parties will officially be a Silver Sponsor of the 2012 Chicago Dance Marathon benefit, taking place on Saturday, 3/3/2012!  We are thrilled to once again donate to, participate in, sponsor, and be a part of this great event, and we also want to thank the CDM for Volunteering to serve as our 2011 TBOX Bar Hosts, who will dispense Stickers, Passport Stamps, Cereal, and LOVE across all 36 Wrigleyville Bars of TBOX!!   Click Here for More Information on the 2012 CDM!

2012 Chicago Dance Marathon - March 3, 2012

The TBOX "Royal" Team at the 2011 Chicago Dance Marathon

Festa Parties, and our sister corporation Great To Be Here Tees, is pleased to announce that we have made a donation of t-shirts and TBOX tickets to the East Lakeview Neighbors Oktoberfest. This annual event takes place at Murphy’s Bleachers.

East Lakeview Neighbors strives to improve the quality of life in their neighborhood through active citizenship, fostering a sense of community, and charitable works.

All proceeds from the Oktoberfest event benefited local causes and in honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, a portion of the proceeds were given to our local first responders.

For more information about the East Lakeview Neighbors you can visit their website at: http://eastlakeview.org