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Rapids Game

September 4, 2010

To read our most recent newsletter, please go here.

What We Do

During the 2008 - 2009 fiscal year, the Shining Stars Foundation touched the lives of 1,720 people.  On a year round basis the foundation hosts a week long Winter Games Week, therapeutic recreation activities, diversified outreach programs, and overnight reunion events for the children and their entire family.

Doctors refer patients to our programs that often have lost their will to live and typically are challenged with difficult social and economic issues that further complicate their diagnosis.  All services are provided at no cost to the child or their family.  Last year approximately 8,152 hours of volunteer service were donated to our events.

Through the Shining Stars programs, children experience many benefits, including enhanced overall health, increased self-confidence, and the opportunity to participate in activities with family and friends. Our community of children and their families get involved with each others lives; they encourage and support each other. We bring newly diagnosed children into our program each year, and they join activities and interact with kids who are in the midsts of difficult treatments, and kids who are healed and cancer-free. A very inspiring aspect of our programs is when a child struggling with their illness meets a child who has recovered from the same disease. The child who is fighting illness gets hope from this meeting for wellness and a better life while the child who has been there and back has empathy and support.

How We Choose Participants

Under the guidance of our Medical Director, Dr. Larry McCleary, doctors and nurses throughout the state of Colorado are contacted to find patients who will benefit most from our one of a kind programs. Typically, the children serviced come from lower economic backgrounds, often single family households, who are actively being treated for cancer or a life threatening disease. Additionally, the great majority of these children have given up their will to live due to their medical challenges. 85% of the families we service have gone through major devastation in their battle with cancer. Divorces and bankruptcy are common and in turn most families could never afford to send their child to any type of therapeutic recreation camp or provide any of the outreach services in which the Foundation specializes. When choosing children to participate in our program the Foundation does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, creed, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, or religion.

If you would like to refer someone for our program, please contact us.

For information about our specific year-round programs, click on a program on the left.