On Friday night, Boston is hosting a haute celebration at The Liberty Hotel to benefit the Parkinson’s Foundation. Co-chairs of the event Rehana Ashraf, Kate Evans, Michael Gale and Anne Greene have been planning the fifth annual Celebrate Spring Boston event and invite you to put on your swankiest duds and head over here at 8 p.m. where the party will get started complete with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, music, dancing and an auction.
Photo Credit: The Liberty Hotel
All of the proceeds raised will benefit the work of Parkinson’s Foundation-funded Research Fellow, Daigo Homma, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Homma, who is studying how chemical messengers may help the brain cope with Parkinson’s, is supported through a Parkinson’s Foundation fellowship program designed to keep talented young scientists in the field.
Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that affects nearly one million people in the United States and more than 10 million worldwide. It is the second most common neurodegenerative disease after Alzheimer’s and is associated with a loss of motor control as well as non-motor symptoms (e.g., depression and anxiety). Although research is continuously being conducted, there is currently no cure for Parkinson’s disease.
We caught up with co-chair Anne Greene to see how it all got started. “Celebrate Spring Boston started with just bringing friends together who had personal ties to the foundation,” she said. “Over the last four years, we have raised $180,000 and so far this year. It’s a really fun event and will be held this year at The Liberty Hotel on the top floor along the catwalk of the hotel. There will be an open bar, passed hors d’oeuvres, a DJ, lots of dancing and a great auction where we will raise lots of money. We have vacation packages to amazing places like Antigua and the Grenadines as well as New England stays up in Kennebunkport along with Red Sox tickets and restaurant gift cards. It’s going to be a really fun event. The fifth anniversary of the event illustrates how critical our generation is to ending Parkinson’s for our loved ones.”
You never know who will be in attendance Friday night. Here’s a look back at last year’s event with former New England Patriots Shane Cheltenham, Harold Shaw and Garin Veris.
Nearly 200 people are expected to attend Friday night. A limited number of tickets and sponsorship opportunities are still available.
