Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation
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The Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for children with chronic and life-threatening medical conditions. The foundation has chapters and offices located throughout the United States, with the national headquarters located in Los Angeles, California. Internationally, the foundation has offices and affiliates in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and Japan.
Starlight Starbright Children's Foundation was founded in 1983 and serves thousands of children each month with its programs designed to help seriously ill children and their families. The foundation's "high-tech" and "high-touch" programs are designed to distract children from their pain, help them better understand and manage their illnesses, and connect families with others facing similar challenges to create a community so that no one feels alone. The foundation does this by providing education, entertainment, and family events that help sick children cope with the pain, fear and isolation of prolonged illness.
[edit] Services and Outreach
The foundation builds playrooms and special events designed to ease the loneliness, fear and boredom that accompany long hospital stays. Entertainment events include musicians, clowns and other entertainers for pediatric hospital patients. Starlight Starbright's community events and outings for children and their families, known as Great Escapes, gives families a chance to have fun together away from the hospital so they can relax, regroup and return home with a renewed sense of strength and hope.
Starlight Starbright also organizes and funds technology-based programs such as online communities, mobile entertainment centers and laptop computers - these are intended to help children and teenagers fill long hospital stays with entertainment, stay connected to their friends, keep up with school work and chat with other seriously ill children; it also provides educational programming via CDs, DVDs and the Internet that helps sick children understand common hospital procedures and manage illnesses such as cancer, sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, asthma, IBD, and kidney disease.
[edit] Programs
The foundation's programs include:
- Fun Centers - mobile entertainment units containing a DVD player and the latest Nintendo game system that roll bedside in hospitals to provide fun and distraction for pediatric patients.
- Great Escapes - relaxing, fun-filled events provided for Starlight Starbright families, including ball games, picnics, cruises, spa days and movie premiers, that provide time to connect with other families, make new friends, and spend family time together.
- Hospital Happenings - parties and entertainers come to hospitals to offer hospitalized kids comfort, companionship and a break from medical treatment.
- PC Pals - laptop computers that provide pediatric patients with a variety of entertaining and educational software, Starlight Starbright's media programs, and filtered Internet access.
- Starbright World - the online social network for teens with chronic and life-threatening medical conditions, and their siblings. Sick teens are able to connect with other teens that are at home or in the hospital. Users post pictures, chat, post blogs and bulletins and find new friends in similar situations.
- Starlight Sites - specially designed hospital environments where pediatric patients can relax, play and interact with other children during their hospital stay.
