Saturday, March 5, 2011

Dina Manzo in Chicago Promoting Charity


SunTimes.com:
When last we saw her, Dina Manzo was renouncing the world of wealth-fueled catfights and marathon shopping sprees, calling it quits on “Real Housewives of New Jersey.”


In Chicago this week, the former cast member of the highest-rated installment in Bravo’s popular reality TV franchise, said her focus these days is raising money to help families fighting pediatric cancer, through her three-year-old foundation, Project Ladybug,


“Thank God I haven’t personally been affected in my own family, but my dad was always a huge supporter of St. Jude Children’s Hospital when I was a kid,” Manzo said at the Drake Hotel Tuesday. Manzo was in town for three days to promote an April 7 fundraiser for her newly established Chicago chapter of the foundation.


“There are a lot of wonderful charities you can help, but these children don’t make this choice. They should be running, jumping and playing. Instead, their lives are hospitals and treatments,” said the woman known more for the lavish lifestyle she and her sister Caroline Manzo, sister-in-law Jacqueline Laurita, family friend Teresa Giudice and trouble-maker Danielle Staub lead in affluent Franklin Lakes, N.J.


Halfway through last year’s second season, Manzo left the New Jersey series — fourth in the franchise showcasing lives of wealthy housewives in Orange County, New York City and Atlanta — to avoid conflict with Staub.


The Chicago chapter of her foundation, Atia’s Project Ladybug Fund, is named for three-year-old leukemia patient Atia Lutarewych of the West Town neighborhood, who was diagnosed at 17 months and is a patient at University of Chicago’s Comer Children’s Hospital.

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