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Oren Miller GiveForward

The Story of Oren

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A fellow father, dad blogger, and friend, Oren Miller, is going through a tough time right now. Diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, he is in a fight for his life and the dad community is responding in a united effort to help Oren and his family with moral and monetary support.

To the dad blogging community, Oren Miller is more than just a dad who writes about his kids. He had the idea to start a Dad Bloggers Facebook group a couple years ago that now houses almost 800 fathers from around the world. This may not sound like a big deal to some but this group has been a source of great pride, support, debate and friendship to those members and, to us, Oren is our leader.

A GiveForward campaign was started, with the initial goal of $5,000, to help Oren’s family go on a trip together. In less than 24 hours, the campaign had reached $15,000 and it continues to grow each day. What started as a simple gesture has now turned into an amazing outpouring of support that is going to help Oren and his family with more than just a family trip. Essentially, the dads have decided to push the bystander effect to the side and set a new trend of giving and sharing as much as they can to help a fellow brother and friend.

I have never been so proud to be associated with a group of such amazing and supportive people. Just two years ago most of us were struggling on our own with our blogs, and now, thanks to Oren, we have a place where we can hang out, share ideas and thoughts on fatherhood, and develop friendships that will last a lifetime. We owe Oren more than just money but this is our way of helping him now, in his time of need, and I hope you will consider helping him out as well.

To donate to Oren’s fund, you can click on this GiveForward Campaign and help in any way you can. Thank you for your consideration in helping my friend and his family.

How Tim Hortons Gave One Classroom The Gift Of Creativity

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The list of traits I want to pass on to my children is extremely long. Near the top of that list, however, is that I want my kids to be able to express themselves creatively. That said, I was excited to find out that my son’s kindergarten class had decided to re-arrange their play area, and was even more excited to find out that they had voted to turn it into a Tim Hortons drive-thru station. If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you will know about my love for everything Tim Hortons.

In essence, what this did was combine two of my favourite things, in creativity and Tim Hortons coffee! I decided to reach out to my local Tim’s restaurant to see if there was anything they could do to help out and I was pleasantly surprised with not only how quickly they said yes, but also with the amount of stuff they contributed to the kids’ new play station. There were hats, toques, balloons, Tim cards, cups, carry trays and even name tags that read “Owner”, which my kids loved.

The kids all had a blast with their new Tim Hortons drive-thru and one of the parents even told me that it was her son’s favourite part of the whole year so far because of all the cool stuff in there. With that, I would like to extend a huge thank you to the management and staff at the Tim Hortons on Carling Avenue for making these kids’ lives a little more exciting and a lot more creative!

Tims1

Tim Hortons Drive Thru

How Canadian Tire Made One Family’s Wish Come True

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Canadian Tire

I believe very strongly in the power of giving. In the past few months, I have quietly started practicing a daily random act of kindness. It sometimes involves spending money but often is something as little as opening a door for someone or letting someone in line ahead of me. I never expect anything in return for any of this but I was lucky enough to be the recipient of some excellent news yesterday and I have to share it with you.

You may remember back in February, I posted an awesome commercial from Canadian Tire, that depicted a father and son going to the outdoor rink to skate and bond together. It was, and still is, my favourite commercial of all time. One of the commenters on the post mentioned that they hadn’t been able to afford skates for their boys but hoped it would happen someday. I’ve deleted that portion of their comment for their privacy.

The post faded into obscurity, as most blog posts do, until yesterday when I received an email from the people at Canadian Tire. They thanked me for sharing their commercial and asked for the contact info of the above noted commenter because they wanted to outfit her family with new skates. I’d be lying at this point if I said my eyes were completely dry after reading through their email and they didn’t get any dryer after speaking to the recipient of the gift. If I ever questioned what the ROI of sharing other people’s amazing content was, Canadian Tire answered it in incredible fashion.

I was already impressed with Canadian Tire for the way they portrayed the Dad in their commercial, but helping a family in need just put them way over the top in my books. When you do awesome things, especially in business, awesome things will come back to you. I hope creating two new life long loyal customers was enough for Canadian Tire in this instance, because they absolutely earned it!

Cheers!