April 13th

For immediate publication:  The Cacciutti family has announced today that they will donate 150 Disney scooter helmets to help protect Cozumel children and to raise awareness for the Lazarus Council Charity.

“Child helmets can be hard to find on the island, and expensive for young families to afford, yet the lack of head protection can result in a child’s death”, explains John Cacciutti. “One of the core principles of the Lazarus Council is to assist those who are struggling, and these helmets will help those most in need and will save precious lives.”

The first 100 helmets have been ordered from Mario’s on Avenue 50 and are due to arrive on the island within days. The remainders are infant helmets, which are not available locally and will have to be imported from the United States. The family plans to give the helmets away at public events on the island, such as festivals and fishing tournaments, but you can also request a helmet by emailing jcacciutti@comcast.net .

Lazarus Council Career Mentoring Program

In addition to helping the poor, the Lazarus Council utilizes career guidance speakers to raise money for charity, while at the same time provides young adults with valuable mentoring sessions lectured by business owners and other successful donors.

Lazarus Council President and award-winning developer John Cacciutti is available for student speaking engagements and is seeking island professionals to join him in co-founding the local chapter of the charity. “It’s a fun and rewarding charity that provides valuable career research and guidance for your children, and at the same time helps those who are struggling and in need of our help the most”, he explains. “There is no better way for young adults to choose their paths than to hear about a wide variety of the roads that have been successfully traveled.”

At career guidance fundraisers, four mentors split up into different rooms while groups of children (grades 11 through college) rotate every 30 minutes to benefit from each mentor’s life and career advice. In two to three hours’ time, young adults can have the extraordinary opportunity to meet and network with successful business owners, professionals and corporate ladder climbers, and learn how they did it.

Attendees are required to make a minimum donation to the charity, but the mentoring sessions are also videotaped and the Lazarus Council makes these recordings available to schools, universities and those who can’t afford to donate.

If you would like to attend a career mentoring social, make a donation or help co-found the Cozumel chapter of the Lazarus Council, please email John Cacciutti at jcacciutti@comcast.net.

The attached photos and interview are copyright-free for media use. For additional photos, personal interviews in English and media support, please contact Jack Francis Public Relations at jfc31@pitt.edu

Interview with John Cacciutti

Do you live in Cozumel?

We rent a condominium in Palmar for about one hundred days per year, but we purchased a lot on the shores of the Marine Park and will stay longer once our house is built.

What compelled you to give away helmets?

We see families clenching children tightly on scooters, and can only imagine how devastating it would be if a child was injured or died in an accident. We know that the Lazarus Council can help solve problems like this on the island, but before we ask others to help bring the charity here, we wanted to make a donation ourselves to get it started.

Why Disney helmets?

The engineers and architects who work on our projects have also designed many of the Disney Resorts and theme park attractions. Plus, what child isn’t attracted to Disney characters?

What compelled you to start the Lazarus Council?

When we first started coming to this beautiful paradise, I couldn’t help but notice how so many vacationers arrive here on luxury cruise ships while others work hard just to get by here.

When I returned to Philadelphia, it was like my eyes were opened to an even greater contrast. Homeless people live on the frozen sidewalks there and beg like Lazarus while masses of people, dressed in fine linen suits, walk by like they don’t even see them anymore.

You don’t have to be wealthy to support the Lazarus Council and help these people and others in need. Abraham described the rich man as “someone who had received good things during his lifetime”. Most of us fall into this category, and the Lazarus Council provides the perfect opportunity to give back and at the same time, mentor our children to be leaders and to keep the help going and spread it throughout the world.

Besides the helmet giveaway and student mentoring socials, what other ways will the Lazarus Council give back here?

Great things are possible once we form the foundation of the charity with local leaders and brainstorm together.

One vision is to set up a cannery on the island for unconsumed cooked food from cruise ships. The bible says that Lazarus could have survived on the scraps that fell from one man’s table. On these floating cities, we have tens of thousands of people dining sumptuously meal after meal, and after every regal feast and royal buffet, they throw the leftovers away! 

These ships are the biggest food banks in the world, and they could be making huge deposits here daily. With this endless supply and the same ships to redistribute the canned food around the world, Cozumelanians could help fight starvation and save lives on a global basis.

What do you do for fun here?

We have WaveRunners that are customized for sport fishing, and love fighting big Wahoo and Mahi-mahi on these little machines.

Do you have any other fund raising interests?

We are conservationists and would someday like to develop initiatives to help protect and preserve delicate parts of our world like the Marine Park. The reefs are one of the principal reasons that tourists come here, and if there are warning and anchor buoys like they use in the Florida Keys that could help, we should be raising money to purchase and install them.