Deirdre Imus’ Kids-Love-Kids Program Brings Smiles to Haiti’s Tiniest Victims

The moment Deirdre Imus heard about Haiti's devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, she immediately thought of its tiniest victims and what she could do to help them.

"Haiti was an impoverished nation before the earthquake," she tells Tonic. "Reporters who have been all over the world covering all kinds of disasters said they had never seen anything as bad as this. I thought, 'This is going to be beyond devastating for the people there, especially the children.'"

Thinking of the children first is only natural for Imus, who founded the Imus Cattle Ranch For Kids with Cancer in New Mexico with her husband, Don Imus, the longtime host of the nationally syndicated talk show, "Imus in the Morning." Each summer since 1998, they have invited children ages 11 to 17 with cancer and serious blood disorders to their 4,000-acre working ranch, where they act as mini ranch hands, saddling and feeding horses, picking vegetables and even herding cows — to help build back the self esteem they may have lost fighting these formidable diseases. "The kids live with us in the house," she says. "We eat meals together. They even call me Mom. My husband is more like a crazy uncle to them."

The Imuses, who are mom and dad to son, Wyatt, 11, wanted to help, so they immediately donated money to disaster relief organizations. "But then I thought, 'How else can we help the children?'" she says.

Much as she wanted to travel to Haiti to help the children there firsthand, she didn't want to tax the already overburdened disaster relief workers in any way. "After the earthquake hit, so many people rushed to Haiti and had to be taken care of themselves, she says. "You don't want to be part of the problem."

Thinking about what she could do from afar, she spoke to Bonnie Eskenazi, the managing director of The Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology at New Jersey's Hackensack University Medical Center, about her idea to send backpacks to children in Haiti, filled with teddy bears, treats and other things that would bring them comfort.

Eskenazi knew just who to call to help turn her idea into reality. In her office was a Post-it note with contact information for Operation Goody Bag founder Jane Cosco, who has delivered more than 125,000 brown paper bags filled with a Tootsie Pops, Tic Tacs, Juicy Fruit Gum, Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, a letter of thanks and even original poetry to First Responders and US service personnel all over the world.

The best part? Cosco has students at the East Brook Middle School in Paramus, N.J., where she worked for years as a computer teacher, hand decorate the bags with flags and other patriotic themes, which touches the hearts of the troops who get them.

"For some of them, this was the only Christmas present they got this year," says Cosco. "Many of them keep the bags (which cost only $2 to produce), which mean everything to them because many of them think that a lot of people are against them. This is our way of saying thank you and to let them know we are thinking of them. And it makes all the difference in the world." (In 2008, Cosco was honored by President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, with the prestigious Lifetime Call To Service Award for all her work with Operation Goody Bag.)

Imus says she loved the idea of collaborating with such a stellar program to help the children in Haiti. "To me, children come first and then our military," says Imus.

Imus met with Cosco and founded the Kids-Love-Kids program, which has sent 700 goody bags to Haiti and is sending another shipment of 5,000 on April 20.

Cosco says she was beyond thrilled when Imus called. "I have been sending goody bags to our troops for years now, which is so important, but I also wanted to start sending them to other groups, particularly kids," she tells Tonic. "I had met with Bonnie years ago to discuss doing that." When Bonnie heard Deirdre's idea, her feeling was, 'We don't have to reinvent the wheel here. Let's team up with Operation Goody Bag to help the kids in Haiti.' So it took an earthquake, Deirdre Imus and a Post-it to make this all happen."

And if anyone could make it happen, it's Imus. "She is a dynamo," says Cosco. "She is driven, focused and goal-oriented. No task is too small for her."

Imus, who is the author of the bestselling Green This! series, which includes Greening Your Cleaning, Growing Up Green: Baby and Child Care and her most recent book, The Essential Green You: Easy Ways to Detox Your Diet, Your Body, and Your Life, has become a force in the Green Revolution, helping teach the nation how to live more organically and toxin-free, as she does.

After learning just how harmful household and other chemicals are to adults and particularly to children, she founded the Deirdre Imus Environmental Center for Pediatric Oncology at Hackensack University Medical Center and created the award-winning Greening the Cleaning product line first for institutional use and later for home use. A whopping 100 percent of profits from her Greening the Cleaning institutional products go to her Environmental Center for education and research to identify and prevent exposures to chemicals and other harmful environmental substances that may cause adult and childhood cancers and other health issues. One hundred percent of retail sales from her home cleaning line of products go to support the Imus Ranch.

Under her guidance, the Hackensack University Medical Center switched from using chemically-based cleaning products to toxin-free, effective, and yes, cheaper, green cleaning products. She started the National Greening Your Schools Program to help schools use healthier cleaning products, and works with businesses, government agencies and health care facilities to make their working environments healthier.

Imus says she loves the idea of sending the troops Tootsie Pops and other Americana-type treats. But, as a reigning queen of green, she wanted to do a healthier version of the bag that Cosco sends to the troops. "We put organic lollipops, organic, gluten-free Yummy Bears, organic gum, organic granola bars, teddy bears, coloring books in French and English and non-toxic crayons inside the bags, which cost only $4 to produce," says Imus.

To make sure the bags got to the kids and didn't "sit in a boat somewhere," she called her friend Bill White, who is the president of Manhattan's Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum and the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which raised money to build The Center for the Intrepid-National Armed Forces Physical Rehabilitation Center in San Antonio, Texas, which cares for military personnel and veterans who have been catastrophically disabled in action. (Imus and her husband raised an unbelievable $50 million to help build it.)

"I called Bill and asked him if he knew anyone in Haiti who could help us deliver the bags to the children there," she says. "He said that he happened to be involved with the Catholic Medical Mission Board, a small but mighty not-for-profit organization that has had a presence in Haiti since 1912. The CMMB has set up orphanages in Haiti and worked with children with HIV/AIDS."

The CMMB helped them to get the goody bags into the hands of the children. "They put the goody bags in canisters they send to Haiti," she says. "It doesn't cost them any more, which is great."

The children loved the bags — and the love that went along with making them. "Some of them were so surprised," says Imus. "Some of them were shocked. Others were overjoyed. It's like getting a bag of sunshine."

She and Cosco would like to start making goody bags for sick children in hospitals. "And at some point, I would love to go to Haiti and hand out the goody bags myself, and bring some of the kids from the East Brook Middle School with me," she says. "That's our next goal."

So why is helping children so important to Imus? Having seen so many sick children come to her ranch, she says, "I wanted to find out why so many children in this generation have cancer, asthma, allergies, ADD, ADHD, autism and other illnesses."

But beyond that noble goal, which she has worked on for years, she says it just comes down to wanting to help people. "Mother Theresa is an inspiration," she says. "A journalist once said to Mother Theresa, 'There are lepers everywhere (in India, where she dedicated her life's work.) This is overwhelming. How are you going to help them all?' And Mother Theresa said, 'I'm not. I'm going to start with this leper right here.' And she did. So for me, I guess it's about starting with helping the kid right in front of me. Helping children has become my life's mission."

Imus would love for kids — and adults — all over the country to get involved with Kids-Love-Kids and Operation Goody Bag. "We want other kids to get involved, too, which will give them a sense of empowerment because they are helping other children," she says.

Getting involved is easy, she says. Here's how you can help:

When making children's bags, please include the words Kids-Love-Kids somewhere on the bag.

Send all bags to: East Brook Middle School, Attention: Lisa Vreeland, 190 Spring Valley Road, Paramus, N.J., 07652.

"When you decorate a bag, fold the top of the bag over by two inches because we staple them and color underneath that so that none of the drawing gets cut off," says Cosco. "On the bottom of the bag, write your first name and last initial, the name of the organization or school you're with, and your town and state. That way, if we get a thank you note, which we often do, we'll know where to send it."

Adds Imus: "What's so great about the program is that its easy and it doesn't cost a lot of money to do. For $4 you can send a goody bag to a child in Haiti. The idea for Kids-Love-Kids is that this is a little thing we can do to let the children there know, 'We care about you and we're not forgetting you.' It's like getting a hug from one child to another."

Photo courtesy of Titus Kana/Kana Photography, photos courtesy of Inspire Haiti.