Vision Care for Needy Children

Dear Donors,

Thank you Global Giving 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 was scheduled for May 20, 2018 in NW Portland.  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.  Our annual Thanksgiving Radio-A-Thon will be held Thanksgiving Weekend on KEX 1190 AM radio station.  See https://1190kex.iheart.com and search for KEX Kids Fund On Air Pledge Drive. 

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 was less than previous years. The KEX Kids Fund drive is on the air this year on Thursday and Friday from 6 a.m. through 9 a.m. and then Monday and Tuesday during the Mark Mason show from 12 p.m. through 3 p.m. The funds are kept in one account and are used for both of our Hearing and Vision Care programs. 

As of 9/30/2018 we have received $100,974.72 including $85,450.90 from our Thanksgiving Pledge Drive.  Our vision care expenses for this period were $47,770 for vision care for 334 children (around $143/child).  These children received vision care services valued at over $165,000.  We have recently added providers and locations to our KEX Kids Vision Provider list and now have 123 providers in 49 cities at 76 locations.

We continue to be concerned about reaching children who have vision problems and whose families qualify for our help (family income less than 200% of federal poverty level). 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:

• KEX Kids Fund On Air Pledge Drive