Years ago, as a young chef in New Orleans, Louisiana, Emeril Lagasse was touched by the work of St. Michael's Special School, which helps mentally disadvantaged children. He became involved in supporting the school by giving cooking demonstrations, dedicating his earnings from a celebrity game show to the school, and participating in an annual golf tournament that raises money for the school and other local children's charities.

Today, Emeril Lagasse is one of America's most celebrated chefs. Restaurateur, author of 11 cookbooks, host of two television shows, and guest expert on others, Lagasse is an impressive force, both for cooking and for community service. In 2002, he established the Emeril Legasse Foundation to support and encourage developmental and educational programs for children, especially those that involve training relating to food and the hospitality industry. Current programs range from Kids Café and Café Reconcile to the Parkway Partners, Teach for America, Covenant House, and other creative programs that involve the children in entrepreneurial, educational, and community-building efforts that teach skills and help prepare them for life and work. Lagasse's 1,000th television show was honored by his television producers with a $50,000 donation to endow a scholarship program at Johnson and Wales University, Lagasse's alma mater, which offers one of the premier culinary programs in the United States.

Since Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, Lagasse, who has three restaurants and his corporate base in that city, has been even more active, engaging in efforts to raise funds for rebuilding and to encourage others to play a role in ensuring the city's future. He's pictured here, center, with fellow chefs. Learn more at http://www.emeril.org.

The Committee to Encourage Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) is an organization of corporate leaders founded in 1998 by Paul Newman (actor and head of the Newman's Own line of food) and Ken Derr (former chief executive officer of Chevron Corporation) to encourage philanthropy by corporations. Each year, the committee recognizes private and public companies that demonstrate outstanding commitment, dedication to measurement and evaluation of programs, and innovation in corporate philanthropy.

CECP's February 2006 award ceremony was attended by representatives of the top 500 corporations in the United States. At the ceremony, former United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette honored five companies that had made significant contributions to the South Asia earthquake relief efforts. Other honorees included Cisco Systems, KaBOOM!, and Grand Circle, a leading international travel company that was recognized for its philanthropic contributions to projects in more than 60 countries, as well as in the Boston, Massachusetts, area. For more information on CEPC, go to http://www.corporatephilanthropy.org.

The Ad Council is a private, nonprofit organization that blends talent from the advertising and communications industries, the facilities of the media, and the support of business and nonprofit communities to deliver messages to the American public about critical social concerns. It produces thousands of public service messages each year that address health, educational, environmental, and quality of life issues for children, families, and communities.

The Ad Council began its work in public service advertising in 1942. An early campaign was for war security, and the slogan "Loose Lips Sink Ships" was one of the most famous of the time. Ad Council campaigns have been so successful over the years that phrases from their advertisements have become part of America's culture and language while changing behavior and building support for a cause. You can read more about specific Ad Council campaigns and their results on their Web site at http://www.adcouncil.org. If you click on "campaigns," you will get a list of campaigns; the subcategory "historic campaigns" describes some of the most successful and best-known campaigns of the past. Think you know a lot? Test yourself on the trivia contest at http://adcouncil.org/timeline.html.

In March of 1968, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, and the U.S. Office of Education teamed up to create the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), a nongovernmental organization with the goal of combining research into education with television production to create the first children's television programs designed with learning theory in mind. The next year, the first workshop program, Sesame Street, debuted and changed children's television forever. In the intervening 38 years, Sesame Street has been joined by other shows and has expanded into several international and other language versions; earnings from the shows and licensed characters have allowed the workshop to continue to combine the latest learning theory with engaging educational programs.

In 2000, CTW changed its name to Sesame Workshop, combining the name of its most successful and best-known show with the original workshop concept, establishing a "creative, inventive environment where collaboration across disciplines brings children and families the best that media offers." As many as three generations of preschoolers around the world have grown up watching Sesame Street.

Research shows children learn best from television that is animated, interactive, and uses repetition to reinforce the learning. Sesame Street and the other shows, as well as their international versions, employ these techniques to present basic counting, reading, and writing skills; readiness skills such as sorting and classifying; and interesting and stimulating social situations in which courtesy, truth, work and practice, kindness, friendship, and many other concepts can be portrayed and discussed. In some parts of the world, the programs focus more on local issues.

As it says on the Sesame Workshop Web site: Take a stroll along Sesame Street and you'll see children laughing and playing in more than 120 countries. You'll hear them talking and singing in languages as diverse as Arabic, Russian, and Zulu. You'll find them sharing a love of learning with their furry and feathered friends along what some call the longest street in the world. Find out more at http://www.sesameworkshop.org.

Attorneys and other professionals regularly engage in pro bono, or unpaid, work for individuals and nongovernmental organizations. The American Bar Association, the professional organization for American lawyers, and the Pro Bono Institute at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, recommend that law firms devote a certain percentage of "billable hours" each year to pro bono projects. The Georgetown institute suggests a range of from 3 to 5 percent of the firm's total hours, which comes to between 60 and 100 hours per attorney per year.

American Bar Association President Michael S. Greco issued a call for a "renaissance of idealism in the legal profession—a recommitment to the noblest principles that define the profession: providing legal representation to assist the poor, disadvantaged, and underprivileged; and performing public service that enhances the common good." He went on to say that "every day, somewhere in this country, lawyers are providing pro bono representation to criminal defendants, victims of domestic violence, immigrant children, elderly residents in need of affordable housing and medical treatment, and small-business owners struggling with legal problems. Lawyers serve on town councils and nonprofit boards, run for elective office, and coach youth sports teams."

The ABA Renaissance Web site at http://www.abanet.org/renaissance/ gives examples of volunteer organizations with which attorneys can serve. For more on the Pro Bono Institute, check out http://www.probonoinst.org/challenge.text.php.

Where, in just a few months, can you go to see Carlos Santana, Andrea Bocelli, Van Morrison, the Flaming Lips, "A Prairie Home Companion," a reggae festival, the Shins, the Dave Matthews Band, and music from video games (complete with lasers and other effects)? Where can you go to see a world-class orchestra and guest artists perform some of the best classical and world music? The answer is the Hollywood Bowl and the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the two venues of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association.

More than one million patrons each year attend concerts presented at these two sites. In addition, the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association offers concerts and educational programs in a variety of locations throughout Los Angeles, with special collaborative presentations and educational and community programs designed to reach underserved populations. Here, girls are enjoying the "Summer Sounds" program. To accomplish this, the philharmonic association receives support from individuals, foundations, and corporations. Check out upcoming programs on the http://www.laphil.com Web site; for a list of "Who's Who" in the corporate world, see the list of corporate sponsors (and the benefits of sponsorship) at http://www.laphil.com/support/corporate.cfm.

Founded by actors Jane Kaczmarek of the TV show Malcolm in the Middle and her real-life husband, Bradley Whitford, of the show The West Wing, the five-year-old Clothes Off Our Back Foundation takes donated objects, most often clothing and accessories worn by celebrities, usually at high-profile events such as award shows and premieres, or in a film, on stage, or on television, and auctions them online to the highest bidder. The sales happen over the Internet, and the proceeds go to various children's charities. Online, one can see how many people have bid, the amount of the current high bid, and the amount of time remaining before the sale is final.

On a recent visit to http://www.clothesoffourback.org, items up for bid included a red dress worn by actress Lindsay Lohan at Olympus Fashion Week in New York. The dress's designer, Calvin Klein, donated it to the charity. The final bid was $2,500. Also, gold-metal-winner Apolo Anton Ohno's Olympic jacket was donated by Roots, the designer of the jacket. The jacket received a final bid of $3,383. In both cases, the proceeds were to be divided between the charities Cure Autism Now, Half the Sky, and UNICEF's work in Darfur.

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The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.

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