San Diego County ~ Any former Kimkins Members

Posted on April 9, 2008 by admin

Calling ALL Former Kimkins Members in San Diego County:

If you are a former Kimkins member and you reside in San Diego County, John Tiedt would appreciate hearing from you at your earliest convenience.

Please email John or use the Contact Us form on his website.

If you know of any former Kimkins members in San Diego County, please be sure to let them know that John Tiedt is looking for their assistance.

Everyone can help by spreading the word.

Thank you very much for your help.

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For those who may not already know, John Tiedt is the lawyer handling the Kimkins Class Action Lawsuit.

I do hope that all former Kimkins members will consider joining the Kimkins Class Action Lawsuit, if you have not already done so. There is strength in numbers.

If you have already joined the Lawsuit via email, please be sure that you get your affidavit to John as soon as possible.

Remember, if you need any help with completing this, be sure to watch the helpful video.

Thank you!

 

Please feel free to share this with anyone else who might be able to help spread the word.  Thank you!

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Kimkins on About.com

Posted on March 15, 2008 by admin

Laura Dolson from About.com has an update on Kimkins on her blog:

 March 2008 Update on Kimkins Diet Scam

 Thank you, Laura, for helping to keep everyone updated! 

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Another Victim of the Kimkins Diet Scam

Posted on March 10, 2008 by admin

Not ALL of the victims of the Kimkins Diet Scam are those who paid money to join the site, or followed the dangerous diet advice handed out by Kimmer (aka Heidi Diaz, Kim Drake, et al).

Another victim came forward today.  Deanna Glick from “That’s Fit” was victimized by Ms. Diaz in another way.

But as a victim myself, I am happy to see anything that exposes Kimkins. No, I didn’t pay membership fees and I’ve never followed the “diet.” But the woman running the show did steal my words from another web site to put up on her own. She gave credit to the web site, but not to me. Either way, she never sought permission to publish the article. And when asked to remove it from her site, simply switched the accessibility of the page to members only. I don’t know why she’s so intent on keeping my words for members’ viewing. The article was about managing type 1 diabetes. It must have been the title, Food Frugality, that caught her eye. But as with most words, context is everything.

 Mag apologizes for Kimkins story – That’s Fit

 Unfortunately, Ms. Glick is not the only one to be victimized in this manner, but we will talk more about THAT in future posts.

Filed under: Kimkins | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments »

Top Honors for Kimkins

Posted on February 26, 2008 by admin

Once again, Kimkins earns top honors by being included in the listing of 25 Of the Most Ridiculous (and Ineffective) Popular Diets at RNCentral.com. 

Congratulations, Heidi!

 I wonder how many of these diets are currently involved in Class Action Lawsuits?

Diet Overkill: 25 Of the Most Ridiculous (and Ineffective) Popular Diets

Published on Tuesday February 26th , 2008

By Jessica Hupp

Some people will do anything to lose weight, even if it means defying common sense and nutrition. But just because your best friend’s cousin lost 20 pounds by drinking hot-peppered lemonade doesn’t mean you should do the same. These 25 diets are not only ridiculous, they’re ineffective and even dangerous.

  1. Atkins: Although wildly popular, and quite effective for some people, the Atkins diet is just not sustainable for most dieters. This diet cuts out healthy foods like fruit, and adopts a limited list of foods that are often high in fat and otherwise unhealthy. Above all, this diet’s extreme restriction makes it incredibly difficult for most people to stick with it.
  2. The Subway diet: Substituting large, unhealthy meals with a wholesome sandwich is certainly an effective way to lose weight. However, the execution of the Subway diet is what makes this one a failure. This may come as a surprise to some, but not every sandwich at Subway is a dietary winner. You can’t eat 14 meatball subs a week and expect to see pounds come off. For this diet to succeed, you’d have to eat very specific items from Subway’s menu and keep up a strict regimen of exercise. This diet is useless because it’s just as easy to make your own sandwich and take a walk.
  3. Cabbage soup diet: Also known as the “Russian peasant diet,” the “Sacred Heart diet,” and “TJ miracle soup diet,” this diet consists of eating a low-calorie cabbage soup for 7 days. It’s generally claimed to cause weight loss of 10 pounds within a week, although most experts believe that sort of weight loss is not possible. Most of the weight lost on this diet is water, so it’s not permanent. It’s also problematic because of a high sodium content, extremely low protein, feelings of weakeness, and increased flatulence.
  4. The tapeworm diet: Almost too disgusting to detail, this diet involves swallowing cysts that you’ve dissected out of beef carcass. The plan is to allow the tapeworm to live in you for up to 10 weeks, and then take prescribed medication to kill it. It should go without saying that this is perhaps one of the most dangerous diets you can adopt. It not only requires you to ingest a parasite, it encourages unhealthy eating habits, which are almost guaranteed to make you gain every pound back once the worm is gone.
  5. The cereal diet: Like the Subway diet, the cereal diet is silly because it requires you to buy a specific food substitute, and eat it on a regular basis. This diet isn’t effective because of the high quality nutrition cereal offers-cereal is generally full of sugar-but rather because you’re required to measure the amount of food you’re eating. No matter what your diet, monitoring and carefully measuring food to restrict calories will make you lose weight. You don’t need a special cereal to do so.
  6. The low fat diet: Nearly everyone has purchased a low or no fat product because we believe that somehow it’s healthier and will help keep the pounds off. But the dirty trick about the low fat diet is that these products aren’t healthier at all-often, you trade fat for more sugar, sodium, or calories. Sometimes, serving sizes are skewed to make an otherwise unhealthy food look better than before.
  7. Hallelujah diet: Reverend George M. Malkmus was diagnosed with colon cancer, and instead of getting treatment, he changed his diet to “the original diet God gave mankind.” Although the diet consists mainly of good staples like fruits and vegetables, you can’t just eat produce you’d pick up at the store. No, this diet requires that you mail-order direct from the Reverend’s farm because the general American food supply is devoid of nutrients. Ironically, this diet has been found to cause nutrient deficiencies, and due to its high-fiber and beta carotine content, is less than ideal for cancer patients.
  8. South Beach Diet: Although it’s created and promoted by a cardiologist, the South Beach diet is less than ideal. This diet takes you through phases of high restriction and lower restriction, constantly keeping your body on a roller coaster of losing and maintaining weight. Once you begin to regain pounds, you go back to the more restricted phase. Yo-yo diets such as this one are not only ineffective, they’re dangerous to your heart and overall health.
  9. Slim Fast: Again, another product-based diet that offers little more than ineffective substitution. In the short term, you will probably see weight loss, but Slim Fast’s shakes and bars are not mentally or physically satisfying enough for the diet to be sustained, especially when you consider that there are healthier, cheaper, and tastier alternatives out there.
  10. The chocolate diet: As studies have come out promoting chocolate as a supplement to a healthy diet, the chocolate diet has come out as well. This diet focuses on decreased calorie consumption with liquid chocolate diet shakes. It acts as a vitamin replacement, and although effective in the short term, has not been found to stimulate metabolism or burn fat, as the diet claims. Rather, any weight lost is a direct effect of decreased caloric intake.
  11. The Fiengold diet: Dr. Benjamin Feingold created a diet free of chemicals believed to cause ADD and ADHD. This included not only food, but also certain drugs and hygiene items. Although this diet is not physically harmful, and can be helpful in some instances, it’s generally not wise to adopt this regimen. Critics warn against teaching children that food can dictate performance and behavior, and depriving them of appropriate professional help from doctors.
  12. The Weight Loss Cure They Don’t Want You to Know About: This diet gives the tapeworm a run for its money. Why? The weight loss “cure” consists of nothing more than ingesting the urine of pregnant women. Whether this is effective or not really doesn’t matter-there is absolutely, positively, a better way to lose weight than injecting yourself with pee.
  13. The blood type diet: This confusing diet requires that you eat according to your blood type. For example, if you’re a blood Type A, that means vegetables are your ideal food. The main reason why this diet works at all is because-you guessed it-you’re limiting what you eat. Of course, this can be achieved through portion control, and you can eat what you feel like whether you’re a “hunter,” “nomad,” “cultivator,” or any combination thereof.
  14. The Hollywood diet: It should be obvious that drinking nothing but juice is bound to leave you hungry and unsatisfied, but many continue to attempt to use this quick-fix detox program as a way to permanently lose weight. Unfortunately, that’s just not going to happen. This juice has a high sugar content, and nearly all of the weight you’ll lose is water, which will come right back.
  15. The Grapefruit diet: This horrible diet is simply unsustainable, offering little nutrition calories, or taste. Even worse, excessive consumption of this acidic citrus fruit could lead to a stomach ulcer. Additionally, grapefruit juice is dangerous when mixed with some medications.
  16. Russian Air Force diet: With this diet, you can put a number of herbs, sauces, and spices on your food, but you’ll have a hard time finding a place for all of those extras to land, considering breakfast is coffee, lunch is two eggs and a tomato, and dinner is salad and tiny portion of meat. This simple caloric restriction is just not sustainable, leaving dieters hovering near starvation, and it has a high sodium content.
  17. The master cleanse : Also known as the lemon water detox diet, this concoction can’t even really be called a diet because you’re not eating anything. With the master cleanse, you’ll subsist on lemon water with cayenne pepper and maple syrup. Incredibly temporary, any weight loss resulting from this detox will come back almost immediately.
  18. The macrobiotic diet: This diet consists primarily of grains, vegetables, and beans, specifically avoiding processed and refined foods. It also requires thorough chewing before swallowing to avoid overeating. Although this is overall good diet advice, the problem with the macrobiotic diet is that it’s often presented as a “cure” for cancer, while many long-term macrobiotics have developed and died from cancer.
  19. The Kimkins diet: This Atkins with a twist requires that dieters follow a strict caloric restriction, which as you must know by now, is nothing special. Additionally, this diet is wrapped up in scandal, as the creator claimed to have lost 198 pounds in 6 months, but later gained it all back, and tried to hide this fact from other dieters.
  20. The magnetic diet: This diet follows the concept that all foods have magnetism that attracts either health or disease. It requires that you drink only water and eat specific foods with “invigorating magnetism,” and follow an eating schedule that creates a caloric deficit. Despite all of the quackery surrounding the diet, it’s actually a very simple method of eating nutritious foods like fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, combined with portion control and exercise.
  21. The hot dog diet: Also known as the three-day diet, this diet is ridiculous because it doesn’t recommend that you eat healthy food-in fact, you’ll eat ice cream as well. Instead, you’ll eat carefully counted portions of food, resulting in the oh-so-familiar calorie restriction that so many ridiculous diets feature.
  22. The apple cider vinegar diet: The apple cider vinegar diet succeeds only in making dieters not want to eat at all, mostly because you’re just not likely to be hungry after downing straight vinegar. You drink a few teaspoons of vinegar, which is supposed to supress your appetite. The secret is not that apple cider vinegar is particularly helpful for weight loss, but because reducing portions and exercising are.
  23. Dr. Siegal’s cookie diet: The cookie diet is a lot less appealing than it sounds. Like Subway, Slim Fast, and other weight loss fads, this diet requires that you eat specific foods that must be purchased separate from a regular diet. These cookies are high protein, but there’s really nothing special about the diet except that it’s extremely low in calories. What’s more, you’re likely to get very tired of eating cookies day in and day out.
  24. Wu-Yi Tea diet: Although it’s presented as a natural cure endorsed by Oprah and Rachel Ray, that couldn’t be farther from the truth about Wu-Yi tea. There’s absolutely nothing special about this particular tea. It’s just oolong tea, and it offers no more benefits than the tea you can pick up at your grocery or health store.
  25. The Martha’s Vineyard diet: Just like the Hollywood diet, this detox requires that you drink nothing but juice for a specific period of time. Again, this will only help you lose weight in the short term, and you’ll gain every pound back once you realize there’s more to life than drinking vegetable juice all day.

 ~*~*~

 Personally, I don’t think Atkins or South Beach really belong on this list, but I guess everyone is entitled to their own opinions.

~*~*~

Filed under: Kimkins | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Kimkins on ConsumerAffairs.com

Posted on February 24, 2008 by admin

Be sure to check out the latest news on Kimkins, from David Wood at ConsumerAffairs.com:

Kimkins Diet Rolls On Despite Founder’s Excess Poundage

No starvation diet for “the Kimmer”

By David Wood
ConsumerAffairs.Com

February 25, 2008

Kimkins Diet
The Kimkins story …

The real story …
• Kimkins Diet Rolls On Despite Founder’s Excess Poundage
• Consumer Complaints about Kimkins
• More Weight Loss News … —
Photo by AllianceAgent.com

Waiting in line at your favorite grocery store is a guaranteed way to see the covers of magazines targeted toward women. It’s a real challenge to find just one week of a year where the cover of at least one check-out tabloid doesn’t have blaring headlines about weight loss or the most recent diet sensation.

“Better than gastric bypass!” “Kim lost 200 lbs in 11 months!” “Christin lost 100 lbs in 5 months!”

Those very comments appeared on the cover of the June 12, 2007 issue of Woman’s World Magazine. The story was a fascinating look at a weight loss diet known as Kimkins, created by Kim Drake, also known as the “Kimmer.”

The Woman’s World story begins by saying they sent out their spies to gather intelligence about Kimkins. The Kimkins website included numerous before-and-after pictures of not only the “Kimmer, but also happy members that had shed massive amounts of weight.

Woman’s World describes Kim as “smiling” when responding to questions. This implies that the Woman’s World interviewer was personally watching the response of Kim Drake. So, you would think that Woman’s World would have noticed that “Kim” was in fact a 300-pound woman.

Kimkins before & after, according to Woman’s World

The Kimkins website saw a huge increase in memberships due to the flattering Woman’s World cover story. Records introduced in connection with a class action lawsuit against Kimkins show that for the month of June, 2007, Kimkins pulled in over $1,200,000 in membership fees.

Mouthpiece needed

So great was the response that Kimkins needed to hire a public relations spokesperson — and there was no one better suited for the job than Christin Sherburne.

Christin’s picture had been featured on the Woman’s World cover, holding a pair of old jeans next to the headline: “Christin lost 100 lbs in 5 months!”

“I was excited about it,” said Christin. “I’ve been overweight all my life, and even though I had never met Kim Drake in person, I wanted to tell others how they could finally lose the weight as I did.”

Soon the Kimkins machine was in full throttle. Members were reporting faster weight loss than they had ever experienced on other diets, and Christin was in P.R. mode in her new role as spokeswoman for Kimkins. But little did Christin know what would happen next.

Job & hair loss

The job of a spokesperson is to represent your company and answer any questions that might be thrown your way, including those from the media. One day, Christin found herself facing questions that she couldn’t honestly answer … questions concerning medical claims and health issues related to the Kimkins diet.

“As a spokeswoman, people would ask me questions that I couldn’t answer, especially related to the medical safety of the diet,” said Christin.

Christin did the logical thing. She contacted Kim Drake, the founder of Kimkins. Christin sent a letter to the “Kimmer” in which Christin asked about medical claims of the diet.

Is the diet safe? Are medical authorities backing the diet? All reasonable questions that any spokesperson needs to be able to answer.

To Christin’s dismay, instead of getting answers to her questions, she received a pink slip. Kim Drake had removed Christin from her public relations job and offered her a much reduced role moderating the Kimkins forums.

While Christin might have been upset about losing her job, what was really upsetting was the fact she was losing her hair…….[………..]… MORE


Photo by AllianceAgent.c

Russian brides

“She (Heidi) went on this false advertising campaign. I think I lost count at 35 false testimonials and false weight loss stories,” said John E. Tiedt, an attorney and a member of the California Health Fraud Task Force.

“We now know that many of these pictures came from Russian bride websites. Even the so-called Kimkins website administrator was a fake, all created by Heidi,” Tiedt said.

“She had already made close to $2 million, but when she heard litigation was heading her way, she began an elaborate plan that would make it appear her business would be bankrupt by the time litigation occurred. In reality, she had over a million setting in a bank account,” Tiedt said.

ConsumerAffairs.com contacted Heidi Diaz but she said she could not comment due to pending litigation. A few hours later, she e-mailed us a complimentary member pass to the Kimkins website………To Read MORE
or the story in its entirety go to ConsumerAffairs.com

Read some other posts about this scam….

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Help us pull these Weeds!

Posted on January 25, 2008 by admin

Hidey, Hidey, Quite Untidy,

How does your garden grow?

With “articals” and spam blogs

and affiliates all in a row.

duck-garden.jpg

Help us pull these Weeds!

You can help us by contacting these “Article” sites

and request that they removal all articles promoting the Kimkins Diet Scam.

 

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Article Land
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Approved Articles

Approved Articles Directory

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Article Alley
~*~*~*~*~
Article Friendly
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Article Hub

Search Results for kimkins – ArticleHub

contact registrar@jumpx.com

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ArticleHub.US

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Article Island
 Search Results – kimkins
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ArticlesDirectory

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Articles On

Articler.com
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ArticleVoip
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Art Woo 
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 BestArticle
~*~*~*~*~
Find In Articles
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Five Star Articles
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Free Article Pro
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Fresh News 
They have one anti KK article and some pro KK articles….
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Go Articles
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Health and Wellness Central.com
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 Health Article Bank
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Health Articles LK 
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Just Enjoy Life.com
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 lovemygym.com
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Many Articles.com
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Onlypunjab.com
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Playground Earth
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PrintMyArticle.com
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 The Leading Articles
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The News Bureau
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Unique Ezine Articles
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**Please note that sometimes you may have to enter Kimkins into the search option to see if there are any Kimkins articles still posted.
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Thank you for ALL your help pulling these weeds!
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IF you visit one of these sites and discover ALL the weeds gone,
please do let me know so that I can take that weed off this page.
Keep up the good work, everyone!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | 4 Comments »

Kimkins – Snake Oil for Weight Loss

Posted on January 22, 2008 by admin

From Dr. David Katz on Prevention.com:

 Snake Oil for Weight Loss

Until Good Morning America asked me to ‘weigh in’ on the Kimkins weight loss plan (click here for this morning’s video), I had never heard of it.  But apparently, an awful lot of people had, and many of them plunked down their cash.

Legal action will likely eliminate the hazard of this particular load of dietary nonsense.  But as long as there is a fortune to be made preying on the gullibilities of a population desperate for rapid, easy weight loss, you can be sure another load will take its place.

You can help prevent that.  Pass every promise through the filter of your common sense.  If it sounds too good to be true, step away from your credit card, and nobody will get hurt.  Don’t go in for losing weight as fast as possible- cholera works beautifully, but that scarcely makes it a good choice.  Much the same is true of extreme, unsustainable diets.

The tried and true here folks- the horror!- is the same as it ever was: eating well, being active.  The rest is new-age cyber-space snake oil.  Pass it on, and let’s put all the charlatans out of business. 

~*~*~*~

Thank you, Dr. Katz, for sharing your perspective on the dangers Kimkins Diet Scam.  I agree wholeheartedly with what you said about if it sounds too good to be true.  

Folks, as Dr. Katz said, “If it sounds too good to be true, step away from your credit card, and nobody will get hurt.”

Please don’t fall for this scam.  This is your life and your health that you are dealing with.  Don’t risk them over the empty promises of the fake success stories on the Kimkins site.

Filed under: Kimkins | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

What Can I DO To Help?

Posted on December 26, 2007 by admin

I hear that alot.

I get it in private messages or emails, I see it on message boards.

What can YOU do to help?  Lots of things.

IF you were a “paying” victim of the Kimkins Diet Scam, you can sign up for the Kimkins Class Action Lawsuit, and you can share your story with the Kimkins Survivors blog.

IF you followed the diet, but didn’t pay to join the Kimkins.com website, you can still share your story with the folks at the Kimkins Survivors blog.  The more stories shared, the better chance we have of warning folks from trying this at home.

So, you never joined the site and you never followed the diet, but you still want to know what you can do to help?  Lots of things.

Check out the list on the Take Action Now page.  There are lots of suggestions for things to do to help there.  Print off the list, and maybe try tackling one or two items a day, depending on the free time you have available.  Start with Signing the Petition, be sure to file a Ripoff Report and work your way all the way down to Troubleshooter.com.  Each individual link will help.  Each one you complete will be another great contribution to the cause.

“Ok”, you say, “I’ll work on that list, a little at a time.  Is there anything ELSE I can do to help?”  

Absolutely!

Do you blog?  If so, blog a little about your feelings about Kimkins.  Blog a little about warning folks to stay away from Kimkins.  Consider joining the Say “NO” to Kimkins Web Ring.

If you don’t blog, have you ever wanted to?   WordPress.com makes it very easy to get started.  Give it some thought.  A blog is an excellent way to speak your mind, share your views, communicate to the world, to encourage folks to Say NO to Kimkins.

Be sure to visit the anti-kk blogs and support the bloggers by leaving comments on their blogs, and maybe share your favorite anti-kk links with them.

 Do you have a MySpace page?  If so, be sure to include some links on your page to warn folks away from Kimkins.  MySpace is an area very full of our teens, and we really should be sure that they are aware of the Dangers of Kimkins.

 Do you post in forums, on message boards, with email groups, etc?  Consider adding your favorite anti-kk links to your signature, to help spread the word.

We have seen KTLA, FOX’s The Morning Show, and KVUE spotlight the Kimkins Scam, but what about YOUR local news?  Consider checking out your local news stations’ websites.  See if they have a link to report news, or a tip line.  Share some Kimkins information and links with them, and perhaps they will pick up the story.  Diets are big news during the first of the year, with New Year’s Resolutions and all.

Every thing we DO to help is a contribution to the cause.  It doesn’t have to be anything big; an email here, a link shared there, a comment posted on a blog, some words of encouragement along the way, it ALL  helps.

There is strength in numbers.

Together we CAN make a difference.

Thank you EVERYONE!  Your contributions count!

If you have suggestions or more ideas for how to help, please be sure to post them in the comments section below.

Filed under: Kimkins | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments »