The Starlight 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, and is a member of America's Charities. Internationally, the foundation has offices and affiliates in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.
Starlight Children's Foundation was founded in 1983 by Dynasty star, Emma Samms and her film producer cousin, Peter Samuelson, and serves thousands of children each month with its programs designed to help seriously ill children and their families. The organization was Samms's response to losing her brother, Jamie, who died at age nine from aplastic anemia. 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.
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Starlight 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'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 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.
The foundation's programs include:
In 2007, Starlight partnered with Animax Entertainment and Legacy Interactive to produce the a downloadable casual game called The Tuttles Madcap Misadventures, which was used as a fundraiser for the charity. [1] The game features donated voice talent of William Shatner, Bob Saget, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ashley Tisdale, Dominic Scott Kay, Dave Thomas and Dave Coulier.