Chicago’s B96 Features Little Giraffe Foundation Gala

As Little Giraffe Foundation prepares for its signature Night for the NICU gala, B96's Rebecca Ortiz featured the organization and co-founder Mike Santoro on Chicago Connection. Listen in to hear how the organization was started, the work we do in the community and how you can get involved.

Limited gala tickets are still available: 4th Annual Night for the NICU

Having a baby in the NICU can be one of the most terrifying moments in a parent’s life. And since 20 and 11, the Little Giraffe Foundation has helped 32,000 preemie babies and their families navigate that trying time. Mike Santoro is the co-founder of the Little Giraffe Foundation and joining us now to talk about an upcoming event and tell us more about how their organization started.

We got started in 2011. It’s a personal story. My wife, Amanda, gave birth to twins, Evan and Cheyenne, and they were born 3 and a half months early. So very low birth weight, Very tiny. You could fit them in the palm of your hand. And after 100 days Evan was able to come home from the NICU but unfortunately my daughter Cheyenne passed away. We wanted to kind of take that moment and give back to all these you know experiences that we had while we were in the hospital, in the neonatal intensive care unit. And so from that we started the Little Giraffe Foundation.

You guys actually do something that sounds so simple but it makes such a huge impact to other families who are going through what you and your wife did. So tell us about what you guys do at the Little Giraffe Foundation.

We’re best known for our gift bag program where we deliver gift bags to hospitals around the Chicagoland area. Six times a year. The reason we did that why we do that is that when we were in the NICU with our twins. They were born in February and on Valentine’s Day we received a small little gift package. And to us it meant the world. The neonatal intensive care unit, it’s just a tough place to be when you’ve got these little babies. And so now we’ve taken that experience of receiving that gift package and done that for over 30,000 families in the Chicagoland area. So every holiday we bring gift bags into the NICU and it contains a book and a toy and it just kind of recognizes to the parents like hey you’ve got this baby that could fighting for his or her life. Hopefully it’s going to get better. Here’s a toy for them and here’s a book for you to read.

And that book really is very important because alot of these babies, they’re in isolettes. They're in incubators where you can’t even hold them. You can’t even touch them. And so that experience as a parent of being able to read your child is I think really meaningful and a good way to connect when you can’t hold your baby.

Mike Santoro is a co-founder of the Little Giraffe Foundation and you said something that actually stuck with me. Of course when families are going through this alot of the time they have so much support and so much love but when you’re talking to someone who has actually been through this same experience it hits a little bit different. This is also a great way to create a community.

Absolutely. We’ve really been able to generate a community of people who have been impacted by this experience. We have a large network of volunteers. At this point I don’t even get to bring in the gift bags these days because we have so many folks that have volunteered. And it’s a great way for somebody who has been in the NICU to give back to then bring those gift bags in. And often the volunteers are the parents and the kids who were in the NICU. So now we have people. We have a group of triplets that were born 10 years ago and received a gift and now they’re the ones that are bringing those gifts in. So it’s really meaningful to be able to give back to this community.

There’s so many folks who have gone through this experience and often you don’t talk about it because it’s not a happy experience. But this has been, the organization, the Little Giraffe Foundation has been able to create this wonderful community of volunteers and people who have experienced this situation.

For someone who is listening who wants to help. Maybe even if they have not personally experienced this but they know someone who has. And what the Little Giraffe Foundation could do for them. How can they help out?

There’s a couple ways. So the best way: We’re always looking to generate donations to continue to fund our programs. Anybody can go to Little Giraffe Foundation dot org. Make a donation. That will allow us to do our gift bag programs. To do our NICU Support grants and our Medical Research grants. So that’s the best way somebody can support us.

The other way you can support us is: We have an Amazon Wishlist.

Those books and those toys that go in all those different holidays. You can purchase those on our behalf. All the classics are there. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Good Night Moon, all the things that you probably read to your children. They’re there for purchase. And those come right to us. And we can then put them in the bags. And give them.

The Little Giraffe Foundation’s co-founder is Mike Santoro and another way to get involved with you guys or to get to know what you do and what you’re all about is with your upcoming gala. So tell us all about that.

Yeah! So we have a gala on April 26. It’ll be at Tree House Chicago. So right down town. It’s a casino event so it’s alot of fun games so you can come have fun with friends and family and give back to the community. Dancing, there will be food, there will be drinks. It’s just a great way to meet the people who have organized or who are involved with the Little Giraffe Foundation. And alot of those are former NICU parents that have experienced that. So a great way to support the Little Giraffe Foundation is to come to the gala on April 26 at Tree House.

So now that we’re excited about this, what is our next step? Do we buy tickets at the door? Can we buy them in advance?

Tickets available for purchase on Little Giraffe Foundation dot org. Go there you’ll be able to see the link to buy tickets. Pre-purchase available. No tickets at the door. We have to have our good head count. But go to Little Giraffe Foundation dot org to get tickets.

And hey if you’re going to go out you might as well spend your money for a great cause. So no reason to feel guilty. It’s all good.

Yeah it’s all for a good cause. Absolutely.

Mike Santoro is a co-founder for the Little Giraffe Foundation. Mike thank you so much for sharing all this information with Chicago Connection. One last time remind our listeners where they can find out about everything we just talked about.

Everybody can find information at Little Giraffe Foundation dot org.