On Wednesday evening stars of all ages gathered to support Starlight Children’s Foundation and celebrate its 30-year history of innovation and support for kids and families with the Starlight Awards at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. Organizations and individuals who have been critical to the advancement and success of the organization will came together to celebrate.
Longtime Starlight Foundation champion and child star Bailee Madison (pictured above) attended, as well as Disney Child Star Sierra McCormick (pictured below).
Former “Full House” Child Star, Candace Cameron Bure (our favorite!) also attended the gala with her beautiful daughter and her former co-stars John Stamos and Bob Saget.
The honorees were: Producer and Philanthropist Peter Samuelson, who co-founded Starlight Children’s Foundation with his cousin, actress Emma Samms, received the inaugural Founder Award; The late General H. Norman Schwarzkopf received Starlight’s Leadership Award for his role in helping raise $50 million in cash and in-kind donations for Starbright World, Starlight’s first-ever social network for teens with chronic and life-threatening medical conditions and their siblings. Aptly, Starlight’s Leadership Award is named after the late General. His daughter Jessica accepted the award on his behalf. Toys“R”Us Children’s Fund received Starlight’s Innovator Award for their multi-year and multi-million dollar investment in child-friendly Starlight Sites in hospitals across the nation.
About Starlight Children’s Foundation
Over the past 30 years, Starlight Children’s Foundation has become a leading global charity that partners with experts to improve the life and health of kids and families around the world. Collaborating with innovators in pediatric healthcare, entertainment and technology, Starlight provides a unique blend of family-centered programs and services from hospital to home. Starlight partners with more than 1,750 healthcare facilities and pediatric hospitals in Australia, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, serving millions of children every year. To learn more, visit www.starlight.org, or follow us at facebook.com/StarlightChildrensFoundation and twitter.com/StarlightOnline.
New online program continues organization’s 30-year history of harnessing technology to meet the needs of today’s philanthropists.
Starlight Children’s Foundation is changing the way people can support hospitals over the holiday season and throughout the year. For the first time, hospitals can publish their Wish List on Starlight.org, requesting items that transform the hospital experience for children. Donors can then point, click and ship those items directly to their facility of choice, leveraging the power of Amazon’s fulfillment network.
Starlight Children’s Foundation has a 30-year history of collaborating with experts and finding ways to leverage technology and meet the needs of hospitalized kids around the world. Starlight’s newest program continues this tradition while addressing the needs of today’s philanthropists.
“Donors increasingly want total transparency in how their dollars are being used,” said Jacqueline Hart-Ibrahim, Global CEO of Starlight Children’s Foundation. “Starlight Wish Lists create an online marketplace that allows healthcare experts to add items that will improve the hospital experience for their pediatric patients. Donors are empowered to directly fulfill these needs allowing for immediate action and meaningful impact.”
Starlight’s mission for 30 years has been to improve the life and health of kids and families around the world. Recent research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation makes it clear that patients with positive hospital experiences have better health outcomes.
Miller Children’s Hospital Long Beach in California is one of more than 1,450 healthcare facilities across the country who partner with Starlight and is taking advantage of the Wish List program to support their patients.
“My job is to normalize the scary part of the hospital for kids, and the tools of my trade are toys,” Rita Goshert, Clinical Operations Manager in Miller Children’s Child Life Department who served as a Child Life liaison to Starlight during the development of the Wish List program. “With our Starlight Wish List, I can request exactly what I need when I need it. If there is a child in my unit who loves purple Play-Doh®, I can add that as an urgent need item and a donor will be able to grant that wish. For a kid, simply having purple Play-Doh can improve their hospital stay.”
The online marketplace is powered by Magento Enterprise and Drupal, and provides a seamless interface for the user, thanks to web and mobile eCommerce design and development agency Guidance (http://www.guidance.com), which provided a $200,000 service grant to develop the site.
“More and more, charities are leveraging eCommerce best practices to meet the evolving needs of donors,” said Guidance President & CEO Jason Meugniot. “The Wish List functionality on Starlight.org is a perfect example. It capitalizes on existing online retail behavior and makes it easy for anyone to donate and make an immediate impact to pediatric healthcare centers and hospitals.”