January’s 2011 PPA Charities Celebration at PPA’s ImagingUSA national convention in San Antonio was just that: a Celebration of the fun and fund-raising successes of PPA Charities during 2010. Eager participants broke the Nashville record of 500 with a full house of between 700 and 800 PPA members, which helped boost the evening’s fund-raising profits to $26,000! The fund-raising events included raffles, over 80 silent auction items and an exciting live auction.

This year the Celebration was co-sponsored by Texas School, and one of the auction items that created the most excitement was the Texas School Instructor “Goodie Basket.” The 35 instructors for the May 1-5 edition of Texas School donated the raffle items to benefit PPACH and Operation Smile. The basket included instructional DVD’s, CD’s, books and other photography-related items worth over $11,000. Twenty dollar tickets were sold throughout the evening and at the IUSA Trade Show. These instructors’ generosity raised $4105! The super-lucky winner was Allison Bordlemay, from Nashville, TN.

It took some 60 high-energy volunteers to make the Celebration such a success. They set up the room; handled check-in and check-out; provided photo-booth photography; sold blinky hearts, raffle tickets, water bottles, kisses, t-shirts and hoodies. Plus they served as silent-auction table captains and live-auction assistants and as rovers to help where it was needed. In short, the Celebration happened because of wonderful volunteers headed by Trustees Cindy Romaguera and Randy Taylor!

Special thanks go to WHCC and SuccessWare for their sponsorship and to auctioneer extraordinaire Louis Tonsmeire. Cheers to photo booth suppliers Denny Manufacturing and Image Spectrum and to booth photographer Jamie Hayes and event photographer Peter Horn. Thanks also to Sam Puc’ who raffled off “A Day With Sam” to lucky winner Stephanie Conrad from Sam’s own home state of Colorado. Since Sam won’t have to fly to Stephanie’s studio, she’s going to treat her to “a mani/pedi session and a few “fun girl things”, too! Most of all . . . thanks to the hundreds of PPA members who turned out for the fun, fellowship and festivities in support of PPA Charities and Operation Smile!

The evening’s high point was the presentation of a check for $100,000, which represents funds raised by photographers for PPACH’s charitable partner, Operation Smile in 2010, which brings the total raised by PPA members to $350,000. This translates into over 1,450 smiles that have been saved through the generosity of PPA photographers. In the photo below, PPA Charities Trustees and Texas School Board members surround Beth Marshall, director of Operation Smile’s Southeast Region and Senior Executive Advisor for Latin America (center left). Beth is the sister of Kathy Magee, cofounder of Operation Smile.

To relive the sights and fun of the 2010 PPACH Celebration, check out the video below:

To make sure you’re a part of the 2012 PPACH Celebration event,
mark your calendar NOW for January 14, 2011.
SEE YOU IN NEW ORLEANS!