Summary: Next week my guests will be my dear friends BeLinda Creech and her wonderful daughter Cee Cee, now famous for her Elephants Remember Joplin campaign. Eleven year old Cee Cee Creech started her journey with elephants as a little girl with a big vision. In 2011, at the age of eight, she became aware of the disaster that was unfolding in Joplin in the aftermath of a devastating tornado, and she was sure that she could do something to help. She started knitting elephants for the children impacted by the tornado, while people caught her enthusiasm and spurred her on by donating money to the Red Cross for each elephant she brought to life. Since then, Cee Cee has been featured in 6 national publications, was a runner up for the Hearthsong Heroes award, and was the 2013 Jay Buckey Humanitarian Award recipient. She has also been interviewed on numerous radio programs, and even managed to get an elephant to NBC’s Brian Williams as a reminder about the needs remaining in Joplin. With the support and encouragement of her mother, BeLinda, and much of the knitting community at large, Cee Cee has continued to give to others through the simple gift of creating things with yarn. Cee Cee has raised over $12,000 and donated more than 1450 handmade toys for a variety of charities. Currently, Cee Cee is working with Ty Pennington (formerly of ABC’s “Extreme Home Makeover”) on his Pencils of Promise fundraiser, with the goal of building schools in Guatemala, and her “Elephants for Guatemala” campaign has a new herd in the making. I hope you’ll all join me next week for what should be a wonderful and heartwarming show.
