Our mission is to develop leadership skills through youth-led service projects. Kids Helping Kids empowers middle and high school students to take their passion for community service to the next level by designing and implementing service projects that benefit low-income children in the community. By doing so, students involved with KHK build leadership and real-world life skills, such as confidence, resilience and problem-solving by initiating and launching projects that simultaneously provide fun and enriching opportunities for other kids in the community. This allows our members to discover their individual interests while working in groups to develop their communication and teamwork skills, while at the same time benefiting others. Our model is simple but incredibly effective. Kids Helping Kids provides the tools and the path for young people to tap into their own unique strengths abilities to positively impact others and make a difference in their communities and beyond.
The mission of the Sunrise Association is to bring back the joys of childhood to children with cancer and their siblings world-wide. This mission is accomplished through the creation of Sunrise Day Camps, Year-Round Programs and In-Hospital Recreational Activities, all offered free of charge.
Sunrise Day Camp opened its doors on Long Island in the summer of 2006 as a program of the Friedberg JCC in Oceanside, offering a summer day camp experience to 96 children with cancer and their siblings. This summer we expect 1900 children in our 8 camps worldwide. In February of 2009 Sunrise on Wheels was launched at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center with rave reviews from our strongest medical partners. Sunrise on Wheels brings a bit of camp into the Pediatric Oncology / Hematology outpatient and in-patient clinics of our affiliated hospitals and this past year this program touched the lives of over 3500 children. We have affiliations with over 30 pediatric oncology centers, offering year round programs in 18 of these hospitals. Now entering its thirteenth summer, Sunrise Day Camp has fully realized its founding vision of giving children with cancer and their siblings the opportunity to enjoy the same kind of summer fun that healthy children take for granted.
Art Start nurtures the voices, hearts and minds of New York City’s underserved youth through consistent creative workshops inside homeless shelters, alternative to incarceration programs, and partnering youth agencies.
“Art Start was founded in 1991, when a small group of motivated artists decided to meet with children living in New York City homeless shelters to create art together. For more than 26 years and with the help of more than 11,700 volunteers and teaching artists, Art Start has brought the creative process to nearly 25,000 underserved youth, and has become an award-winning, nationally recognized model for transforming young lives. Our programmatic goals are founded on solid research that shows that art programs for youth, especially those who have been impacted by turbulence, poverty, and other traumas, have the power to increase academic performance, decrease juvenile delinquency, increase self-esteem, and lead to more positive interactions with peers. Creative arts allow children the opportunity to grow and develop self-awareness through self-expression, which has been proven to reduce stress and accelerate psychological and physical healing. Art Start’s workshop methodology has been customized specifically for homeless and court-involved youth to provide them with vital creative opportunities. Our approach includes an open-enrollment policy, a focus on safe space, an emphasis on creative process over final product, and the frequency and consistency needed for youth who might otherwise be experiencing instability. We bring creative opportunities to youth where they are, so they can explore their own potential and inherent talents while establishing a sense of consistency with caring and supportive teaching artists and volunteers. We have seen how the creative exchange between artists and students decreases alienation, fights social stigma, builds a sense of community, and fosters human connection. Youth are encouraged to take positive risks as they build confidence by publicly demonstrating their talents and successes in front of an audience. Students are mentored by professional artists and fully supported by staff through positive feedback and encouragement.”
Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital, a member of the Westchester Medical Center HealthNetwork, is the children’s hospital for New York’s Hudson Valley and Fairfield County in Connecticut.
The hospital provides children and their families with lifesaving and life-changing services, many of which are found nowhere else in the region. These services include a comprehensive pediatric hematology and oncology program; the area’s most advanced pediatric cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery service; the region’s only pediatric organ transplant program as well as its only Level I pediatric trauma and burn service; the area’s only dedicated pediatric intensive care unit and its regional neonatal intensive care unit, which cares for the region’s tiniest and sickest newborns.
Combined with world-class pediatric care is a special healing environment developed from the point-of-view of patients and families as well as doctors and nurses. The special environment puts children and their families at ease and gets the whole family feeling better.
A donation made to Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital enhances services and ensures the hospital stays on the cutting edge of medical technology and research.