When Dian Granito started as the events manager for New Mexico’s Children Youth and Families Department, she was asked to review the pictures of all the children available for adoption. The first thing she noticed was how ugly the picture quality was. She immediately realized that in order to draw more people to adopt children, the photos have to be improved.

Granito thought back then that a large-scale art show would definitely help spread the word and so she invited the state’s most talented photographers to capture the beauty and spirit of the children. This weekend is the 10^th year anniversary of the Heart Gallery.

At present, there are already 130 Heart Gallery organizations nationwide and two other recently started in Canada. Granito also launched Heart Gallery of America, a national organization, with the hopes of expanding in Europe.

Her very first exhibition broke gallery records when they attracted at least 1,200 people in a single night. Granito said that when she walked in the gallery for the first time and saw how the pictures captured the beauty and youth of the children, she knew they were on to something.

True to what she expected, six children were matched with foster families on the first night. One of the six children was adopted by the photographer who took their portraits.

In a matter of years, news about the success of Heart Gallery spread like wildfire and 5,000 children have been adopted because of the program. Garito said that it was all about getting the message across. She added that the portraits hold so much power that they have helped the children get out of the shadows.

New York Fashion Night, which will be held at Pure: The Existence, was organized to help a fashion model cope up with her disease—brain cancer.

The local fashion model, Morgan Griffin has hoped all her life to be a runway supermodel. She is stunningly beautiful at twenty-three years old, but her face and her catwalk were put to risk when diagnosed with a brain tumor in December 2010. Though she immediately had surgery to remove it,  the financial implication of the entire treatment course is something to worry about.

It’s an odd twist of events since Morgan had already landed her first magazine cover just before she was diagnosed with a Stage Two Astrocytoma. She had to drop out from college and put her modeling career on hold in order to cope with surgery and side effects of the treatment. To help Morgan, her family and friends put up a huge fashion show for Morgan’s benefit. As Massingill says, “From what I see and what I know, she is really genuine. She has a lot of friends and a lot of support. I don’t think she would have that kind of support if she wasn’t who she was on the inside.”

The fashion show is expected to be gigantic. As photographer Toni Riales who helped plan the show, said “We thought… Let’s just do something.. Let’s throw a party. Since we don’t do anything small, we decided to have a giant fashion show, and have band and a dj and make it a fundraising event for her.”

Though Morgan won’t be able to do the catwalk at the fashion event solely for her, her friends and supporters will surely be there.