On November 5th, Paul Rudd hosted this year’s Annual All-Star Bowling Benefit for SAY at Lucky Strike in New York City.
SAY (The Stuttering Association for the Young) is a national non-for-profit organization that hosts summer camps, after school and weekend programs, speech therapy and support groups for young people who stutter. Geneva Carr spoke to the integrity of SAY’s programs, “SAY is an amazing organization. Kids get mistreated and bullied a lot and we talk about that a lot but this is a place where kids with the same disability get together and feel normal. At the summer camps, they have amazing creative opportunities, they learn language skills. It’s a disorder that you can work through. And it’s a place where they get to be a normal kid. They’re not different, they don’t get teased. It’s really important for kids to feel that way and it’s a super great organization.”
Because of SAY’s committed support to families and children in need, they have never turned down a child due to lack of financial support. To this day, SAY has provided almost $1 million in underwritten tuition and aid every single year. Thanks to their donors and supporters SAY has changed the lives of countless individuals, giving kids the self-confidence and tools they need to be heard.
This year’s benefit, spearheaded by its founder, Taro Alexander, and Paul Rudd, who has hosted SAY’s benefit for the 7th year in a row now, was joined by a team of celebrities including Annie Golden, Brandon Victor Dixon, Mariska Hargitay, Peter Hermann, Geneva Carr, Betsy Wolfe, and Daphne Rubin-Vega, just to name a few.
We spoke with Rudd about the opportunity to support such a cause and to be able to influence lives like the ones SAY does: “I’ve seen real courage, real strength, real celebration and joy. It feeds me and my soul in a way that it’s selfish. Doing stuff like this is actually the most selfish thing you could do because it makes you feel really good. It’s amazing to come to something like this for one night and be reminded how incredible the human spirit is and how much good there really is in the world. Especially right now when we could be all be reminded of that.”
Photography by Swift Dunphy.
