Join the SAG Foundation in supporting children's literacy! This summer, the Foundation has an exciting opportunity to benefit our global children's literacy initiatives. We are partnering with the Clothes Off Our Back Foundation to sponsor our annual online auction of celebrity-authored signed books.
Between August 2 and August 17, you can bid on autographed books written by your favorite actors. To support our cause, celebrities including Sir Sidney Poitier, Kirk Douglas, Julie Andrews, Tim Allen, Carol Burnett, Mickey Rourke, Sting and many more have donated their signed books to be part of this auction. Take part by bidding on books that will be great for your own summer reading or make perfect gifts for friends and loved ones.
Please check out www.clothesoffourback.org/sagfoundation between August 2 and August 17 to all the books up for bid... and to do your part for children's literacy!
 The successful Back Stage at the SAG Foundation series headed to New York on August 3rd, for "Net Gain: Creating, Marketing and Building an Audience for New Media." The event was also be Live Streamed for viewing by anyone with an Internet connection.
The first such joint effort as well as the first Live Stream session to take place in New York, the event and its accomplished panel shared valuable insight toward using new media to take your creative ideas to the next level. Topics included industry trends, building an audience for your content, marketing your idea and how to get involved in the new media community.
For further details, including accessing an archived version of the event (please allow 1-2 days after the session for the archived event to appear), click here.
 The "Back Stage at the SAG Foundation" event partnership brings another exciting event to actors everywhere through the Foundation’s Live Stream technology, an evening to celebrate some of your favorite Casting Directors!
Tune in on Wednesday, July 14, 7:30 p.m. (Pacific) to the Live Stream Video Gallery to meet some of the winners of Back Stage's Readers' Choice Awards for Favorite Casting Directors. We will be honoring them, as well as finding out why actors voted them as their favorites.
The panel, including Michael Donovan (Winner, Favorite Theater Casting Director), Scott David (Winner, Favorite TV Casting Director), and more (TBA) will be moderated by Jessica Gardner, Research and Casting Editor at Back Stage.
Look for future Back Stage at the SAG Foundation Live Stream events on the second Wednesday of every month!
Sharing information through seminars and panels is easy with an auditorium or classroom, but how to serve the countless career-minded professionals living outside of the major market areas? That issue has been addressed with the Foundation’s Live Stream program, an innovative online informational and educational system that brings Foundation seminars to participants everywhere, beyond an in-house audience and outward to those living outside of Los Angeles and New York.
Broadcast live through the Internet, the LifeRaft program's utilization of Live Stream technology spearheaded this movement toward greater inclusion of the professional actors’ community. From January through April 2010, the SAG and SAG Foundation LifeRaft Live Stream: Full Stream Ahead program of business-of-acting seminars reached an extensive audience, indicating a jump of over %1,000 in viewership (from 1,600 to over 16,000 participants) over last year’s LifeRaft Live Stream Pilot Series over an equivalent period. The success of this technology, along with quality seminars, respected panelists and the facility of submitting questions in real time through email and twitter, has rendered virtually every actor’s Internet connection a venue for Foundation events. Moreover, the popularity of the Pilot Series has led to an expansion of the Live Stream experience to a variety of other Foundation offerings, including Special Events, Conversations and Voice-Over Seminars.
February's Master Class with Roger Love was shared with actors/voice students everywhere
Live Stream Special Events have included a Master Class with Vocal Coach Roger Love, Hollywood vs. the Supreme Court with California Justice Eileen C. Moore and the current Back Stage at the SAG Foundation series of events coordinated with the inexhaustible actor’s resource magazine and website. A March event teamed LifeRaft with new media authority Tubefilter to present "Artistic Excellence in Web Television", not only packing the SAG Foundation Actors Center with a full house but reaching over 72,000 viewers via Stickam, the online streaming social network, and LifeRaft Live Stream’s current business-of-acting June 2010 series shares knowledge through such seminars as The Art of Perseverance, An Evening with Feature Casting Directors and Crush It! Using Your Other 8 Hours to Monetize Your Art.
Details for participating in upcoming Live Stream events are available by accessing the Foundation website’s Live Stream Page, and as an added benefit to those we serve, all Live Stream seminars are archived for later viewing in the Live Stream Video Gallery.
Florida Children's Literacy Initiatives Program Director Natalie Rogers (left) receives the
Helping Kids Shine award from Disney's Cheryl Boza (Manager, Community Relations)
Florida’s Junior BookPALS program has received a generous gift in Disney’s Helping Kids Shine grant of $5,000, a show of support for children’s literacy as well as the dedication put forth by Natalie Rogers (SAG Foundation Florida Program Director – Children’s Literacy Initiatives) and her hardworking team of volunteer readers, mentors and students.
The annual grant, which provides funding to selected non-profit organizations whose work helps and engages children in community and society, was presented by Disney representative Cheryl Boza during a celebration of literacy, with volunteers, students and teachers gathered at the end-of-year PencilPALS party at Catalina Elementary School in Orlando.
4th grade students entertain with a rousing violin concert at
Catalina Elementary School's end-of-year PencilPALS party
PencilPALS was developed by Rogers to supplement BookPALS, the first program to be implemented from the Foundation’s Children’s Literacy Initiatives, a far-reaching, multi-faceted effort to address the problem of substandard literacy rates among children while inspiring them with the love of reading and writing. PencilPALS pairs adult volunteer letter-writers with elementary students for ongoing correspondence during the school year while Junior BookPALS, developed by Arizona BookPALS Coordinator Ellen Dean, brings together students from disparate and different demographics, grades and schools.
Through Junior BookPALS, leadership training by professional actors and certified teachers gives high school drama students the opportunity to read aloud to and tutor under-served elementary students in critically low-performing public schools. Additionally, the Junior BookPALS program fosters healthy adult-to-student and student-to-student mentoring relationships, with high school students involved in meaningful leadership activities that benefit the broader community.
Established in 1993 by Barbara Bain (Mission Impossible), BookPALS currently engages over 2,000 volunteers (many of them professional actors) in reading aloud to over 100,000 preschool through 5th grade students weekly at public schools, hospitals, cultural institutions, and shelters across the nation as well as online through our interactive website, Storyline Online (www.storylineonline.net) – which has, by the nature of the Internet, extended our campaign for literacy to homes and classrooms around the world.
All of the SAG Foundation’s Children’s Literacy Initiatives have engaged unique collaborations and heartfelt teamwork from thousands of actors, artists and educators to help young minds elevate their powers of creativity and communication. BookPALS, Junior BookPALS, PencilPALS and Storyline Online empower children not only toward avoiding the educational and professional pitfalls common to teens and adults with poor reading and writing skills (nationwide high school drop-out, criminal involvement and poverty numbers all show statistical correlation to illiteracy) but also to encourage them to reach their potential as creative, productive and socially responsible thinkers.
Grants such as Disney’s Helping Kids Shine award go far in championing the fight to improve children’s literacy. While our services benefit from the work of talented and generous volunteers, funding remains a necessity in administering our non-profit programs. We welcome all who value the education and inspiration of young minds to learn more about the SAG Foundation’s Children’s Literacy Initiatives by reading more about them here, to spread the word about these programs, and to encourage donations to further this challenging, necessary and ultimately rewarding work!
Conversations with Young Actors brought a panel of young working artists to the Foundation on Sunday, May 23 at 2pm at the Actors Center in Los Angeles.
Gage Golightly (The Troop, Heartland), Kay Panabaker (Nancy Drew, Fame, Phil of the Future), Doug Brochu (Sonny with a Chance, iCarly) and Chris Brochu (Soul Surfer) brought significant career knowledge, advice and experience with fellow actors and their friends and family at this exciting and informative event.
Look for an archived video to appear in our Live Stream Video Gallery shortly!
Our year-long Back Stage at the SAG Foundation event series is off to a lively, informative and entertaining start, having brought “Picture This: Your Headshot from Every Angle” to an in-house and online Live Stream audience, welcoming viewers and their questions from coast-to-coast.
Joining moderator Jessica Gardner for the in-depth May 12 discussion, as well as a headshot analysis for some of the event’s participating audience members, were casting directors Geralyn Flood, Marci Liroff and Stuart Stone and photographers Alan Weissman, Kevyn Major Howard, Sara Corwin and Jeff E Photo.
Examining the elements of an effective headshot, the various panelists expressed sometimes widely varying opinions and critiques, all of which are archived for viewing at the Special Events Video Gallery.
Back Stage at the SAG Foundation brings the non-profit Foundation and the actors resource newspaper and website together to serve actors with information to empower their careers. Stay close to our website for details regarding attending these events, scheduled for the second Wednesday of each month, whether in person or online.
(On stage, L-R: Moderator Jessica Gardner, Marci Liroff, Geralyn Flood, Stuart Stone, Kevyn Major Howard, Alan Weissman, Sara Corwin, Jeff E Photo)
May 7, 2010 - Thank you to all the Storyline Online supporters who visited us Friday a.m. at www.storylineonline.net for the premiere of the interactive website's latest story, Harry the Dirty Dog, read by the treasured Betty White with a special introduction from Betty's dear friend Valerie Harper!
The story is now streaming at www.storylineonline.net and, along with several activities, is available 24 hours, 7 days a week for all to view.
Harry the Dirty Dog was written by Gene Zion and illustrated by two-time Caldecott Honor winner Margaret Bloy Graham over 50 years ago. We are delighted that HarperCollins has given us the opportunity to share this story with you. There have been many requests to feature classics for young children and we are pleased to add yet another quality story to our library of books.
Please know that funding remains a concern for this important effort in the SAG Foundation’s Children’s Literacy Initiative and that we are truly grateful for the encouraging comments and financial assistance Storyline Online has received. As we continue approaching companies and organizations to underwrite Storyline Online, we will try to fulfill the many requests and suggestions we receive from teachers, parents and children around the world.
From all of us at the SAG Foundation, thank you!
Remember to keep visiting us at www.storylineonline.net
Read On!
The SAG Foundation is thrilled to work with Back Stage for a year-long series of events geared toward the professional acting community!
The "Back Stage at the SAG Foundation" event partnership is a logical and productive fit, as both the non-profit Foundation and the actors resource newspaper and website are committed to serving actors with information and education toward the betterment of their careers.
The first of these events, all of which are planned to take place on the second Wednesdays of each month, will explore headshots in the May 12 event, “Picture This: Your Headshot from Every Angle.”
Guild members may click here for further event/reservation details.
 Superstar vocal coach Roger Love's Master Class for the Foundation and its online audience offered several highlights to actors seeking to maximize their vocal effectiveness. Watch highlights by clicking here!
The Foundation is happy to bring career-enhancing knowledge to online viewers through its innovative Live Stream program and invites you to stay tuned to Foundation updates for more exciting and informative events. You may also enjoy events archived online for your convenience at our Video Gallery.
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