Jodie Foster
helps launch new Trevor Project hotline

Academy Award-winner Jodie Foster helped kick-start a new campaign by the Trevor Project, the only round-the-clock suicide prevention help line for gays and questioning youth, with the largest donation in the program's history, following the nonprofit organization's newly announced plan to raise $1 million in multiyear gifts for two new call centers.

Foster's donation honors Academy Award-winning producer Randy Stone, one of the organization's founders, who passed away unexpectedly earlier this year. The two new call centers will both be called the Randy Stone Call Center.

"I feel so lucky to have had a best friend like Randy Stone, the funniest guy I've ever known," said Foster in a press statement. "He was talented, passionate, supportive, and as big as life. He brought all his beautiful energy to the Trevor Project, which has done such meaningful work on behalf of gay and questioning youths."

The Trevor Project has opened call centers in Los Angeles and San Francisco. The new campaign, the centerpiece of a keynote address at the Trevor Project's seventh annual New York City gala June 25, aims to open a New York center and fully fund and operate the Los Angeles center.

Foster is joined in her effort by Stone's brother Jeffrey R. Stone, as well as philanthropists Ray and Dagmar Dolby, Paul Reitz and David Rosen, Henry van Ameringen, and Bryan Bantry. Already the group has donated almost half of the campaign's goal. (The Advocate)