Children/Youth

Peer Health Exchange's national director of outreach and development, Madeline Kerner, discusses the organization's history and fundraising strategies.

Texas’ proposed budget cuts will likely have a disproportionate effect on children’s hospitals. The financial implications won't halt operations. But it will mean cutting back on expansions needed to serve a growing population of children and efforts to recruit and retain the best specialists and faculty, said Texas Children’s Hospital's Ben Melson.

The disparity hinges on Medicaid, the joint state-federal health care program that covers nearly three million children in Texas. State lawmakers, facing huge budget shortfalls, cannot find the multibillion-dollar savings they need without cutting already skimpy Medicaid provider rates.

Two major Capital Region nonprofit agencies that help families and children have announced a partnership designed to improve and streamline their services, though officials with both organizations do not consider the move a merger.

Under the memorandum of understanding signed this week, the Parsons Child & Family Services and Northeast Parent & Child Society, both of which are fiscally solvent, will keep their names and no layoffs are planned. There will likely be some consolidation in cases where both groups have offices in the same location.

The fourth grade at Adams School in Midland has been working on a fundraiser for Smile Train, a nonprofit that provides cleft palate surgeries for impoverished children around the world.

Students held a T-shirt design contest in which three students’ designs were chosen to be silk-screened on T-shirts with the phrase, “With A Smile, Every Day’s A Great Day At Adams!” and Smile Train's website, with all profits going to Smile Train.

Many benefactors hand out grants to Omaha-area organizations and programs every year. But few of those philanthropic groups are made up of teenagers. Youth in Philanthropy is a group of high school juniors and seniors who, as sophomores, participated in Youth Leadership Omaha, which is sponsored by Creighton University and the AIM Institute. The program’s graduates then move on to the Ambassadors alumni organization and its Youth in Philanthropy program.

ConAgra Foods, whose social cause is ending child hunger, is taking a new approach to raise the issue’s visibility. The company is starting its largest campaign ever, including a television special, to spur more grassroots involvement to make sure no child goes hungry.

ConAgra financed a 30-minute program to tell the stories of American families who, each day, face the question of whether they will have enough to eat. One 8-year-old boy says, “I eat less so my sisters can have another meal.”

The Canucks and the team’s charitable arm, Canucks for Kids Fund, will announce a $5-million donation to BC Children’s Hospital and diabetes research, the largest single gift in the fund’s 25-year history. BC Children’s Hospital said $2 million will go toward diabetes research and $3 million will go to the Campaign for BC Children, a fundraiser launched in April 2008 to raise money to rebuild the hospital into one of the world’s leading pediatric care and research centres.

A coalition of youth charities rallied in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday to protest billions of dollars in proposed federal budget cuts to youth and education programs, including Head Start, Pell Grants, and Community Services Health Block grants.

The Children’s Leadership Council, which unites 57 organizations that provide services to young people, brought together advocates to protest proposed spending cuts that, if approved, would represent the largest loss of federal funding for youth organizations in nearly 50 years.

In many ways, the joint birthday party in late January for 8-year old Sofia Segalla and her best friend, Clara Goulding, was full of traditional fun.

What was unusual, and truly inspiring about Sofia and Clara's party, however, is that in lieu of gifts, the girls requested that donations be made to a Chicago-based nonprofit, Friends of the Orphans, to help children in need in Haiti who were affected by the country's devastating January 2010 earthquake. The birthday guests contributed approximately $900 to St. Damien's Pediatric Hospital.

Kansas University Dance Marathon raised $37,000 for charity at its third annual dance marathon last weekend. More than 400 students attended the 12-hour event, almost double last year’s turnout.

KUDM, a student-run nonprofit organization, raises money for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals and as of Jan. 1, donates exclusively to KU Pediatrics. KUDM has donated $57,000 over the past two years and has set a donation goal of $60,000 this year.