“For decades, enCourage Kids Foundation has been a champion for city hospitals, helping us to address the health disparities we encounter across underserved communities. As the largest public health care system in the United States, we see some of the city’s most vulnerable infants, kids, and teens, and your support allows us to treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve. Thank you for caring for the city’s kids!”
– Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and Chief Executive Officer
NYC Health + Hospitals
Our Healthcare Heroes Campaign
For over 35 years, enCourage Kids Foundation has partnered with pediatric facilities, elevating the level of care medical staff are able to provide to children and families.
Each year, we rely on our annual Gala to raise funds to support this work. This year however, due to the pandemic, we are foregoing our annual Gala and launching our Honoring Healthcare Heroes Campaign. Our goal is to raise $1 million to help them in their work to treat and care for the children and families they serve.
Will you join us?
It has been one year since our canceled 35th Anniversary Gala and the beginning of the crippling global crisis that severely impacted enCourage Kids and our hundreds of hospital partners. The pandemic left many facilities with very few resources as they scrambled to treat patients suffering from COVID-19.
Pediatric units became dedicated to serving adult COVID-19 patients, playrooms for kids were closed, and staff lounges were transformed into caregiver support centers. Child life staff who used to use EKF-funded tablets for entertainment and distraction were now using them for end-of-life conversations between adult patients and kids at home. Yet children still needed medical attention for unrelated diseases, traumas, emergencies, and life-threatening illnesses.
During the height of the pandemic, we pivoted our resources to address the ever-changing needs of our pediatric healthcare partners and kids.
Our work is not done.
Countless doctors, nurses, child life specialists, therapists, and social workers have had the difficult job of navigating care for all who needed it, and have faced each day with courage and kindness. They show up for their communities and persevere in the face of adversity.
We are humbled to celebrate these pediatric healthcare heroes who have continued to care for children with unwavering dedication and to raise funds to ensure they have what they need to continue doing their jobs, particularly when so much of the support we provide is for projects and therapies that hospital budgets do not cover. These projects benefit hundreds of thousands of young patients, helping them cope with illness by alleviating stress, offering distractive therapies, educating on diagnosis, uplifting spirits, and more, while also addressing the gap in health disparities.
I hope you’ll help us continue to honor all of those on the frontlines while providing children with the healing power of comfort, hope, and laughter. Your generosity, as much as you’re able to commit, is crucial to our success. I thank you in advance for your consideration.
With gratitude,
Michele Hall-Duncan
President & CEO
Pivoting During a Pandemic – March 11, 2020 – Five-hundred dinners that would have been served at our 35th Anniversary Gala were instead given to the Bowery Mission. This was the first of many pivots enCourage Kids and our pediatric healthcare partners had to face during the past year.