The Sundt Foundation is helping bring smiles to the faces of hundreds of Phoenix-area children with chronic or life-threatening medical conditions. That’s because the Foundation recently awarded a $4,250-grant to the Starlight Children’s Foundation to help the organization build a new Fun Center at Banner Thunderbird Children’s Center in Phoenix, Ariz.
Fun Centers are mobile entertainment units that are placed at the bedsides of hospitalized children (ages 3-18) to provide fun and distraction from medical treatments, procedures, and pain. Fun Centers contain a flat-screen television, DVD player and a Nintendo Wii gaming system. Fun Centers have been hailed by hospital staff as lifesavers during long waiting periods in emergency rooms, outpatient clinics and other isolating environments, calming and occupying the children and thus easing staff and parental concerns. Fun Centers not only ameliorate isolation and provide distractive entertainment for hospitalized children, but also accommodate hospitals’ needs for mobility, storability, infection control, and security.
“We can’t thank Sundt enough for gifting a Fun Center for Banner Thunderbird’s Children Center,” said Rebecca Arvizu, Starlight’s Community Coordinator. Starlight is a national nonprofit organization, founded in 1983, that helps seriously ill children and their families cope with their pain, fear and isolation through entertainment, education and family activities.
The Sundt Foundation raises money primarily through contributions from Sundt employees, which are then matched dollar-for-dollar by the company. Since its inception in 1999 the Foundation has made grants totaling more than $5 million to hundreds of worthy organizations. Most grants are awarded in communities where Sundt has an established office, or to charitable organizations associated with military installations where the company has a construction project underway.