Strauss & Troy’s philanthropic Make A Difference (“MAD”) Team continues to stay very busy, generously sharing their time and talents with those less fortunate.

• On February 14, members of the MAD Team joined the fight against childhood cancer by answering telephones for Cincinnati country radio station, WUBE-FM (B-105), during its third annual Country Cares for St. Jude Kids® radiothon, which was broadcast live from Newport on the Levee. The radiothon began in 1989 to benefit the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and has since grown to be one of the most successful radio fundraising events in the nation, with more than 200 radio station partners raising more than $280 million in pledges.

• The MAD Team, for the fourth year, partnered with the Cincinnati Public Schools to sponsor a Freedom Writer’s essay contest for students at Taft Information Technology High School. This year’s topic was “community.” The project, which was incorporated into the 2007-2008 curriculum, is designed to promote literacy, self-confidence, and self-awareness among inner-city youth and to encourage the pursuit of higher education.

The students were asked to write a two-page essay on What Community Means to Me. Their teachers reviewed the essays and then forwarded over 150 of the top essays to the MAD Team for review. From those submissions, 25 winning essays were chosen, five from each grade level and five by special education students.

On April 8, the selected winning authors were transported by trolley to Cincinnati Union Terminal for a guided tour of the Cincinnati History Museum and a self-guided tour of the “Freedom Sisters” exhibit. From there, the students traveled to Strauss & Troy’s offices for a luncheon and awards ceremony, where Brewster Rhoads, the Regional Director of Governor Strickland’s Southwest Ohio office, congratulated the children on behalf of the Governor for their achievements. Every student also received a T-shirt from the Cincinnati Museum Center; the top five students (one from each class) received a $50 gift certificate; and the grand prize winner, Demico Latray Dunn, received a Dell laptop computer.