UDIGG CARES INC. and Different Shoes Inc. Unite to Distribute Clothing and Shoe Wear

This marks the birth of a charitable partnership tour between UDIGG CARES INC. and Different Shoes Inc. The upcoming tour will be a cooperative effort encompassing various philanthropic events designed to address and heighten the awareness of Atlanta’s Homeless plight. In addition, it will provide practical action-oriented solutions and contributions with hopes of changing lives and ultimately affecting positive change within Atlanta’s neighborhoods and communities.
“I believe that in life we all have a personal obligation to help each other. Different Shoe Inc. is one of the vehicles that I use to carry out what I understand to be my life’s mission. Different Shoe Inc. is a non-profit organization (NPO) that focuses on community charitable contributions of new and used shoes coupled with exposing youth to the Arts. I am honored to partner with Big L” , says Tanya Reed, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Different Shoes Inc.
Big L expresses, “I have lots of friends and constituents that genuinely want to give. Some of my personal and business relationships can help embrace impoverished communities in a concerted effort to build bridges of help between those willing and able to give, and those in need. Through UDIGG CARES INC., the bridge that links the willing and able to the needy will be built.”

About Different Shoes Inc.
A nonprofit organization (NPO) with two focuses: procuring new and used shoes that are given to those in need, and delivering youth-based civic, social and educational enrichment through the cultural aesthetic of the arts.

Different Shoes Inc. provides two types of programs:
1) Youth and Urban Music Initiative (YUMI)
2) The Different Shoes Charity

YUMI: provides a vehicle for youth to create, document and share artistic ideas. Students are given the tools to assume responsibility and ownership for their individual and collective creative projects. YUMI focuses on the Atlanta youth through civic activism and the promotion of self-affirming messages in music and the arts.

Different Shoes Charity: provides Atlanta’s youth tangible and intangible support through workshops that facilitate self-esteem building, cultural unity and empathy. The Different Shoes Charity utilizes the “shoe” as a metaphor to represent individualized identity and the “path” as a symbol of shared experiences in life. Different Shoes Charity also procures new and used shoes and distributes them to those in need while providing relief support to victims of natural disasters and unforeseen life challenges.

Different Shoes Inc. obtains major donations from footwear companies, retailers, churches, nonprofit ministries, civic groups and schools, transferring the gained assets to people in desperate need of footwear.

About UDIGG CARES INC.
A philanthropic/charitable initiative established by Big L, CEO of UDIGG Records, to meet the shelter, food and clothing needs of the people in Atlanta’s impoverished communities and around the world.

Atlanta's local homeless Statistics

• The fastest growing group of homeless people is children under 9 years of age.
• Atlanta is the poorest city in the U.S. for children; more children in Atlanta live in poverty than in any other city.
• 48% of all the impoverished Atlanta children live in families with annual income of less than $15,000 a year.
• For children under age 6 living in female-headed families with no spouse present, the poverty rate is 58.8%.
• Children ages 6-17 living in female-headed families with no spouse present have poverty rate of 44.9%.
• Current welfare (TANF) benefits are $282 a month for a woman with two children. Could you find an apartment to rent on $282 a month?
• Fewer than 20% of those women and children living on welfare get any kind of housing subsidy.
• 98 million children in the U.S. have no health insurance. Eight million of those children without health insurance live in working families.
• Did you know that 40% - 60% of homeless people work?
• Minimum wage in Georgia is $5.85 per hour, which yields $12,168 per year, before taxes.
• HUD says you should pay no more than 30% of your income for your housing (30% of minimum wage yields $270/mo. for rent).
• The average two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta rents for $834/mo. (which is 30% of an annual income of $33,360 or hourly rate of $16+ per hour). Thus, you need to earn $16+ per hour to afford that apartment, according to HUD.
• 46% of the jobs with the most growth between 1994 and 2005 pay less than $16,000 a year.
• 40% of homeless men are veterans.
• The wealthiest nation on Earth has a wider gap between rich and poor than any other nation.
- Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless

CONTACT INFORMATION:
Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless | 477 Peachtree Street | Atlanta, GA 30308 | Phone: 404.230.5000 | Fax: 404.589.8251| www.homelesstaskforce.org
SHELTER HOTLINE: | 1.800.448.0636
Tanya Reed | www.lemonadejones.blogspot.com | www.facebook.com/lemonadejones

Same Drink...Different Day

No sunshine in the "A." But there is still life as I know it. Preparing to promote my shows for the month...one at the Chocolate Bar (Downtown Atlant) and the other tenative....come on Johnny lets do it! I have attached so much to the outcome that I have really hendered my progress over the years...get the hell out of the way me!!!! LOL! No seriously, my ego...not so much that it is vain but that my ego is so sensitive and worried about stuff that has nothing to do with me...."Move...B#tch...get out the way!" As in Ludacris' song!

Yet for some reason, I am optimistic today. Maybe because I spoke with two of my Atlanta based friends...one that I am sure is my friend...she came to me in a way that I least expected...her big old spirit in a little body...young based on age, old based on her past life...I can tell she has been here...God is giving her a little suprise gift that for some reason I believe she can handle...as her mentor...I just want to support her and be there for her in instances that I think a human being should be. I want to be there for her at times where I wish that somebody could have been there for me...but I know there will come a time when I can't. I know she is prepared. Thank you God. She has loving family that are supportive of her so, I think she is covered and so is her gift.

We must protect our gifts and our gifted ones. We must hold them tight when they don't want to be held. Held tight in prayer, meditations and positive energy...projected. Call on the angels to surround them. It's me it's me, it's me oh God standing in the need of pray. I pray that those who I believe to love me are sending angels of protection my way. I have a gift that has been compromised by esteem and just plain situations and people. But I sit here today proclaiming preservation for my self....sometimes you have to encourage yourself...who new that life was nothing more than a self proclaimed pep-rally...I didn't, but I sure do know now...no matter how you feel...speak the word and you will be healed! Same Drink...Different Day...just a creative way to say what my grandaddy would say."Same soup warmed over....." Yummy!

Human...Acceptance

Who does that? Who writes a blog on their perspective of "human?". Me...because that's what I said I would do yesterday at the end of my first blog entry ever on this new blog. Today not quit sure what I want to say about being human but because I said I would I will and here it goes. I think it's human to feel, to sense, and to intellectualize. I think it's human to be hypacritical, contradictory, and judgemental. I think it's human to want to be better than the next, to want to be included, to want to exclude, to want to be acknowledged and validated. I think it's human to see the duality of things thus being able to see and reason relatively. I think it's human to be bored but pretend that everything is sooooo exciting....ok now I am taking it far. I think it's important that every human experience validation, support, and shared interests at sometime or another. I think every human should at some point identify a measure or indicator of success and meet that and feel that...and hold on to that so that when things seem boring or uneventful you can tap your memory to trigger good feelings.

I think our feelings definitely sway our thoughts as humans...feelings trump even when you think you are being proffessional or non emotional...you are...the facts say...but what do you feel, how do you feel. Are you in control of your emotions? I don't think we can control them...we can just become more conscious and aware of them...we can objectivley feel them or view them....we decide to attempt to not express them...do your best in a world that teaches their sons not to express emotion as early as 5 years old. And with it being a patriachal, western society this "non-emotional" boy will inevitably grow into the man that makes the rules void of emotion and lacking sensitivity....a world that is kind of difficult for me to manuver through because...I am ruled by the tides and the moon...the eb and flow of my menstral...the "creative mind," of a singer...aka an artist aka a sister a daughter, a black bitch, and angelic being...a beautiful black woman, sexy, cute and any other adjective or label that I have been referred to as.

I am bored because sometimes people want to play with me and sometimes they just don't. I came to ATL thinking I would be embraced...but i have experienced rejection just like in Chicago...rejection. So then I ask myself should I return to my family or should I continue to explore a world in search of my new home or new found place of acceptance?...or is it that at 31 I still have not accepted who I am, or is it that I still don't even know who I am accepting? Or should I just accept that I am indecisive? Questions...Acceptance...I think it's human to want to be accepted, however rejection comes with the territory. My feelings of rejection are relative to my feelings of acceptance.