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With March Madness engulfing the country this week, the Jessica Rekos Memorial Fund has come up with an ingenious and endearing way to raise money in memory of the 6-year old victim at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

In lieu of a raffle and in remembrance of Jessica’s knack for organizing projects, the charity is organizing a NCAA bracket pool to raise money for whale education and conservation, according to a post on ESPN.com

The contest costs $10 to buy in, or $25 for three. The winner will ge an all-expenses paid trip to see North Carolina play Duke at Cameron Indoor during the weekend of March 7-9, 2014. And, according to the ESPN post, “the knowledge that they contributed to the memory of a smiling child who loved to set the table, choose the Friday night movie and read about orcas, which she became fascinated with after watching “Free Willy” and observing whales at Cape Cod.”

Click here for instructions on how to enter and play. Brackets must be in by Thursday before the games begin. You may enter as many as you like.

The pool was organized by Jason McCallum, a Newtown native who works at ESPN. “We just want to raise as much money as we possibly can,’’ he said in the ESPN post. “We want Jessica and the things she loved to never be forgotten.”

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Natalie Barden, whose young brother Daniel was one of the 20 children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, was one of the many family members who met with President Barack Obama just days after the shootings.

The 10-year old apparently had a lot to say to the President. But she never got a chance to express her feelings during Obama’s whirlwind visit on Dec. 16.

Her father, Mark, told Katie Couric in an interview later that week, that the President’s visit was ‘less than fruitful than we were hoping.

“James and our daughter Natalie had a few things that they were hoping to express to him out of concern for the fact that this situation happened at all and how we can maybe hopefully stop this from happening again,” Mark Barden told Couric. “My daughter Natalie was interested in asking him if he could pass some kind of legislation so that the only people that had guns were military personnel and law enforcement, and if people needed guns for sport that they could go to a range and the guns would have to stay there.”

The Barden family found a way to get Natalie’s message to the President. She wrote a simple note which was passed on to Lillian Bittman, the former chair of the Newtown Board of Education, at Daniel Barden’s wake.

Natalie asked if Bittman would forward the letter to CNN’s Anderson Cooper to read on the air.

Bittman passed the note to Cooper, who read it live during a live segment aired Friday night.

Natalie Barden's letter to the President, delivered to CNN's Anderson Cooper.

My name is Natalie Barden and I wanted to tell the President that only police officers and members of the military should get guns. If people want to do it as a sport they could go to a shooting range and the guns would not be able to leave there.

“I told her, ‘Now you’re a member of the White House press corps,’” Bittman said. “And she giggled at that. And that was really good because she wants to make a difference. And this is her little way of making a difference. …It’s helping her heal. Now she can make Daniel’s life count for something…”

Barden’s thoughts on gun control were aired just hours after Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, called for putting armed guards in American schools.

See the full post on Anderson Cooper 360

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CNN, citing a senior law enforcement official, is reporting that the brother of Newtown Sandy Hook shooter Ryan Lanza has been found dead at a home in Hoboken. N.J.

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NBC News has confirmed the identity the shooter at the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as Ryan Lanza, 24, of New Jersey, and that his mother, a teacher at the school, is one of the victims.

An additional report from NBC says Lanza shot and killed his father in Hoboken, N.J.

More than two dozen people, who were mostly children, were shot and killed Friday morning at the Newtown elementary school. In addition, a dead body, reported to be Lanza’s mother, has been found at a home in Newtown.