NEW YORK-JANUARY 9, 2009 Mentoring USA, Actress Tamara Tunie of Law & Order: SVU, & Bloomingdale’s Unveil Window in Honor of National Mentoring Month 2009 on Friday, January 9, 2009 at Bloomingdale’s, Lexington Avenue at 60th Street, New York City, NY. To celebrate National Mentoring Month and the belief that mentoring encourages children to let their dreams take flight, Mentoring USA unveiled a special Bloomingdale’s window designed in collaboration with New York’s PS 59. Bloomingdale’s volunteers have, for the past eleven years, mentored elementary school children at PS 59 through the Mentoring USA program. Currently more than 70 store executives spend one hour each week with their mentees, talking, sharing, tutoring, and encouraging the kids to dream big for their future. The window, unveiled by Bloomingdale’s chairman and CEO, Michael Gould, and Mentoring USA Founder & Chair, Matilda Raffa Cuomo, featured two mentors—a man and woman—pulling the string of a kite and instructing a group of children how to fly their kites. Featured on the back wall of the window are 70 paintings by the third-grade mentees of PS 59. Each kite-shaped painting features the child’s aspirations—to be President, doctor, lawyer, etc—or a self-portrait with their mentor. Mentor/Mentee Designed Window Showcases Mentoring USA’s 11 Year Partnership with Bloomingdale’s and New York’s PS 59. The unveiling was followed by a “thank you” breakfast for the children in the store’s famous “Forty Carrots” café on the seventh floor. Bloomingdale’s is America’s only nationwide, full-line, upscale department store; and a division of Macy’s, Inc. It was founded in 1872 and currently operates 40 stores in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Minnesota, Georgia, Florida, Nevada and California. Mentoring USA, a New York City-based nonprofit, is a structured, site-based, mentoring organization that began as the first state-sponsored, one-on-one mentoring program in the country back in 1987. The program was founded by then First Lady of the State of New York, Matilda Raffa Cuomo and became a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 1995. The program is part of HELP USA ( http://www.helpusa.org) and has helped over 5,000 children in need since inception operating on both the national and international level. HELP USA was founded in 1986 by Andrew Cuomo as H.E.L.P. (Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged). Andrew Cuomo's sister Maria Cuomo Cole serves as Chair of HELP USA. PHOTO CREDIT:Copyright ©Manhattan Society.com 2009 by Christopher London | tel:Private |e-mail: ChrisLondon@manhattansociety.com****NOTE: More notes, id's and select images to follow*****