Sky High

The AmeriCares Airlift Benefit raised $1.4 million for the organization’s relief efforts in more than ninety countries. Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe emceed the annual event, attended by more than 700 guests, including actor Aaron Eckhart and Bobby Valentine, the new Boston Red Sox manager. The theme of this year’s gala, held at the Panorama Hangar at Westchester County Airport, was Humanity in Action, an effort to call out the nonprofit’s disaster response work in Japan and in Joplin, Missouri.

Once the gala concluded, seventy-five guests, including Jennifer Schiffman of Stamford, boarded an airlift flight to the Dominican Republic, where they observed AmeriCares aid programs in action. “Hearing the stories of people who have been beneficiaries of AmeriCares was so uplifting,” she says. “It was clear to me that AmeriCares truly makes a tremendous difference in the lives of the people it touches around the world.”