Vision Care for Needy Children

Dear Donors,

Thank you GlobalGiving donors for your generous support this year!  Several donors have set up recurring donations and we appreciate this ongoing support. Thank you, too, for helping us to continue to provide vision and hearing care for all eligible children requesting our help!!  We have scheduled two fundraising events in 2018.  Our third annual Vision Fun Run is scheduled for May 20, 2018 in NW Portland.  See www.visionfunrun.com for additional information and registration. We are working with the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation to sponsor a Golf Tournament at Langdon Farms in September.  See the OLSHF website for additional information www.olshf.org

In 2017 your support helped us raise $220,877.61 (including payments from our November 2017 pledge drive received in January 2018) to provide both hearing and vision care for needy children in Oregon and SW Washington. Most of our operating expenses for 2018 were pledged and collected during our annual Thanksgiving Fundraiser. We are very pleased with this support as the radio time for the fundraiser included only the four morning broadcasts and not the two afternoon commuting time broadcasts that have historically brought in $15,000 to $20,000 in pledges.  Our funds are kept in one account and are used for both of our Hearing and Vision Care programs.  

As of 3/31/2018 we have received $86,176.15 including $83,640.90 from our Thanksgiving Pledge Drive. Our vision care expenses for this period were $21,870 for vision care for 160 children (around $135/child).  These children received vision care services valued at over $87,000.

We continue to be concerned about reaching children who have vision problems and whose families qualify for our help (on free or reduced-price lunch programs). School districts in Oregon depend upon the Oregon Lions Sight and Hearing Foundation to provide vision screening for their students.  Funding this program is becoming a challenge and the KEX Kids Fund Board is expanding our partnership with OLSHF to help them continue to provide screening to districts without the resources to fund the screening program.  In response to a proposal from OLSHF, at our April, 2018 board meeting, we voted to continue to contribute to OLSHF to help them provide the Mobile Health Screening Program (MHSP) to districts that lack local resources to share in the cost of providing this service to their students. OLSHF has reported that they provided screening at over 600 sites during 2017. About 179,000 children were screened resulting in referrals for 19,690 children (~11%) for additional vision care.  See attachments for the OLSHF report and budget. 

Thank you again for helping us to bring sight to needy children in Oregon and SW Washington.

Links:

• 3rd Annual Vision Fun Run

• OLSHF Vision Screen Report (PDF)
  
• 12-10-17 email to Kerith (PDF)
  
• 2018 Oregon City SD thanks (PDF)