Orange County : Benefit Celebrates the Spirit of Italy

Summer can be a special time in Italy, as anyone who’s traveled there during these sunny months can tell you. For one thing, there’s the Ferragosto midsummer festival enjoyed around the country.

It’s a time for indulging in Italian food, music and dance.

For the fifth year in a row, Tutto Mare restaurant hosted a local version of Ferragosto last Saturday at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, not far from the restaurant, to benefit the Orange County chapter of Childhelp USA.

More than 400 turned out for the event, which featured strolling entertainers, including a mime, juggler and magician.

Guests danced to the band Mercy & the Merckettes and were served a traditional menu of appetizers (cold poached salmon and saffron rice salad, to name a couple), pasta (quill pasta with julienne eggplant and spicy tomato sauce, orecchiette amatriciana and tortellini alla panna) and entrees (stuffed roasted piglets, Italian sausages and grilled prawns).

Childhelp USA’s Orange County president, Carol Packard, said the proceeds, which organizers said reached $35,000, will fund the organization’s three Orange County group homes and its residential treatment center in Beaumont.

“We’re committed to changing the story of each child who enters our doors,” she said. “A community’s help and support can be the catalyst that changes the story into one with a happy ending.”

Packard noted that Childhelp USA, founded in 1959, is a nonprofit group that fights child abuse and neglect through prevention, treatment and research. Call (323) 465-4016 for more information. Childhelp USA also has a 24-hour child abuse hotline at (800) 4-A-CHILD.