I’ve never met Ali Edwards, but I know her husband Chris from high school and reconnected with him during his campaign for State Representative in 2006. Chris told me that Ali was becoming quite an accomplished blogger in the crafting world and a little research confirmed it to be true.

It is when Kevin Bacon comes into the picture that this story takes a heartwarming turn.

We all know Kevin Bacon from his “Footloose” and “A Few Good Men” performances, but he is probably most famous for the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game.

To his credit, Kevin has turned this into a charitable cause, creating Six Degrees, a site where you can create a badge to donate to any charity. Kevin Bacon is also going to donate a $10,000 matching donation to each of the six charities who had the most donations between 1/18 and 3/31. I am not positive, but Ali’s charity has to be one of those.

Ali and Chris’s son Simon is autistic, so Ali got one started for the charity Autism Speaks and posted it to her blog. After great success in raising donations, Ali got her story out with a TV story on KVAL, as well as political blog BlueOregon doing a story on it and posting the badge to their site. Since then, this charity has consistently been the #1 donation leader on all of Six Degrees, currently at over $58,000.

Great work Ali! It is great to see a new and innovative way to help a good cause. See a message from Kevin Bacon about Six Degrees here. (You know you want to be 1 degree from Kevin Bacon!)