Drawn To Help

Each year, in the United States alone, over 3 million children are admitted to pediatric hospitals.  The numbers worldwide are staggering.  They are suffering from a wide range of incredible medical challenges, rare diseases, life-threatening illnesses and are often isolated and feel completely alone for long periods of time.

During the pandemic, the time that they are hospitalized has become increasingly difficult for them.  The amount of visitors they can have has been very limited, and sometimes they can't have any guests at all.

Many have begun to struggle with depression in addition to their physical problems.

Their lives are highly regimented, and they often feel that they've lost all control over their own lives.  They dream of having some sort of normalcy again.  They want to laugh and have fun.  They want to be children again.

We give them the chance to do exactly that.  They decide what they want to draw, or what they want us to create for them.  Our lessons utilize easy to follow step-by-step instructions so even the youngest patients can relax, not get frustrated and just have fun!

These children are our future.  And we want to do everything we possibly can to help them get through their struggles and emerge on the other side as happy, compassionate human beings.

Drawn To Help takes the fun of creating cartoons to children facing extreme medical challenges.  Our volunteers help lift their spirits, encourage them to keep fighting and utilize the healing power of art.

We supplement existing art therapy programs at some locations, and provide new programs at hospitals that don't currently have organized art programs.

Studies have shown that creative activities can dramatically reduce stress in patients and release endorphins into the body that can lower pain levels and aid in the healing process.

( Link to an article citing some of these studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... )

We've seen this happen in person.  We've witnessed young patients who were in deep depressions suddenly perk up, smile, laugh and begin talking about their future. We've also seen children who have lost their appetites due to their treatments suddenly begin nibbling on food again while they're drawing.

Although we originally began doing these visits in person - and still do when we are able to - the pandemic forced us to come up with technological solutions so that we could continue to have a powerful and positive impact on the patients we serve.

We created a vast digital art activity library for caregivers to share with the children they serve.  It features over 400 pages of coloring activities, hidden pictures, mazes and drawing instructions.  Cartoonists and children's book illustrators from all over the world contributed their art to help children in hospitals enjoy the healing power of creativity and pleasant distraction.

The pages in the digital art activity library can be printed out and colored traditionally, or they can be uploaded to art apps and colored digitally.

The popularity of these flash drives with hospital employees and patients made us begin thinking of the next step.  We wanted to do more.  So Drawn To Help has begun developing a flash drive that will house a wide variety of "How To Draw" videos.  Children in isolation will be able to use them to find comfort, fun and encouragement whether they're at home or in their hospital room.

We've begun enlisting an incredible array of artists who are creating content for those flash drives.  And, as that list continues to grow we are expanding our outreach and creating videos and live programs that are broadcast through closed-circuit television systems in children's hospitals.

We are already serving and have taken our programs to children's hospitals in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, Illinois, Ohio, Texas and Virginia, and would like to expand much further than that.

Although we are currently a U.S. based nonprofit, we do reach young patients from around the world.  I've personally worked with children who have traveled here for treatment from China, the U.K., Iraq and other countries.

And we've distributed our art activity library flash drives to kids from across the globe through an organization known as iCan.  The children received them as part of an annual conference they had, and used them traditionally and digitally, then gave us feedback about ease of use and content.

We've sent them to American hospitals that are now beginning to treat children from Ukraine.

We've also done regular programs at Camp Happy Days and Camp Courage in South Carolina (both digitally and in person) and Victory Junction Camp in North Carolina.

So we have a pretty solid track record at this point, but want to reach as many young patients with these unique healing programs as we possibly can.

Drawn To Help serves pediatric patients ranging in age from 5 years old to 18 years of age.  However, we have worked with children as young as two years old.

We've worked with kids who are battling cancer, struggling with Alopecia, awaiting transplants, been injured in accidents and those who are struggling with mental challenges. We've touched the lives of children suffering from rare disorders like Marfan Syndrome.  And we've recently been asked to arrange visits to serve children who have Sickle Cell Anemia

Drawn To Help also brings joy and laughter to young patients who are in hospice care, and works with their families as well.

We're deeply honored that they have chosen to spend some of their last remaining moments here on earth with us.

Many of the kids we serve are feeling lonely and marginalized.  Our solution is to bring them happiness and let them know that people they've never met before love them and care deeply about them.

Whether we're doing in-person visits or interacting with them through remote broadcasts, we let them know they are important.  They matter.

Sadly, in the United States, many families whose children are diagnosed with intense medical conditions end up in bankruptcy.  Their funds can be extremely tight and limited.  We help alleviate that a bit with the gifts that we give to the young patients we serve.

You should see their faces light up when they receive their free art supplies and fun books that are autographed by the creators of the books!  We deliver those things in person when we're with them, and also ship them to hospitals to give to patients who are participating in the broadcasts we do.

Wouldn't you love to a part of those truly special moments?

Drawn To Help's connections in the world of cartooning and children's book illustration make us the perfect organization to design and deliver new solutions to pediatric patients.

As we've continued to grow and expand, professionals in the field have consistently reached out to us and asked if we can help them begin programs for pediatric hospitals in the areas where they live.

Our volunteers include and have included an amazing array of former Disney animators, comic strip creators, comic book artists and children's book illustrators. We have others waiting in the wings for the time when we can fund bringing them into the fold, and Emmy Award winner Mark Kistler recently joined us as a volunteer creating digital content.

As we developed the first version of our digital art activity library, artists from around the world reached out to offer some of their work for us to use.

We sought input from hospital staff members, Child Life Specialists and the patients themselves.  We listened.  And we openly solicited ideas and feedback.  As we began working on upgrading the first version, we had patients directly involved in the process.

Pediatric patients from around the world were given a free flash drive containing the art activities through an organization known as iCan.  They gave us feedback on ease of use, what they thought of the product and how we could make it even better in the future.

We've encouraged Child Life Specialists and art therapists to contact us with their input and suggestions.

And all of this has led us to begin working on creating a wealth of cartooning and drawing instruction videos that we can share freely with pediatric patients, utilizing technology.

We've been asked to create content for a library of "How To Draw" videos for a children's hospital in South Carolina that is installing a new closed-circuit television station, and are working in conjunction with a group from Clemson University to make that happen.

Kids LOVE cartoons.  When they hear the word cartoons, they open their hearts and their doors to us.

And we do all of this on a shoe-string budget.  Just imagine what we could accomplish with your backing, support and additional guidance on how to develop even more technology-basedl solutions to help young patients.  It would be amazing.

Drawn To Help has a very specific need for funding, so that we can continue to grow and expand our operations.  We want to reach as many young patients as we possibly can.

Being a relatively small organization, we are also hoping that we can gain more technical knowledge and guidance from people who are much better versed in the world of technology than we are, and continue to expand.

We're open to new ideas and suggestions on how we can better utilize technology to accomplish our goals, and are hoping that the Challenge will bring folks who would like to help to our attention.

Because SOLVE has a global outreach, we're hoping that we can also begin to create a model for similar programs that we can share with people in other countries, and help them begin to build similar organizations.  Cartoonists are everywhere!

Artists from Hong Kong, France, the U.K. and other areas around the world have already contributed their art to our digital art activity library, and it would be fantastic if we could use those connections to bring similar programs to young patients in their countries.

This young man declared that Drawn To Help's digital art activity library was "The coolest thing EVER!"

We'd love to see our programs replicated around the globe, because we know just how effective and important they can be in the lives of children with rare diseases and truly challenging medical conditions.

Drawn To Help provides a truly unique way to assist a patient's healing process by harnessing the creativity, fun and laughter involved in drawing cartoons.

Drawing funny pictures helps children heal!  Studies have borne out this theory, and we have seen it with our own eyes.

There are several examples of what we've witnessed personally in this article:

https://www.healing-power-of-a...

The power of art therapy is recognized by hospitals around the world, and the word "Cartoons" seems to open children's hearts and doors to our volunteers.

We have already reached thousand of young patients with our programs, and some parents have even credited us with helping save their children's lives.

You can find an example of that in this online story that includes interviews: https://thehill.com/changing-a...

Drawing helps reduce stress and releases healing endorphins into the body.  When a child is concentrating on creating their own cartoons, that's all they're thinking about, and they tend to forget their medical challenges for a while.

Our gifts of art supplies help them continue to experience those healing benefits long after our volunteers have gone home, or have ended their virtual visits.

Expanding our outreach and increasing our use of technology could have a catalytic impact in the children's health field, and enable us to share our programs with tens of thousands of patients we might never be able to reach otherwise.

The positive impact we could make in the lives of patients and in the facilities that are treating them would be tremendous.  And we expect that as Drawn To Help continues to expand, we'll share our knowledge and expertise with others who would like to replicate our programs.

In the next year, Drawn To Help's goals are to expand our outreach to young patients substantially, reaching treatment facilities we might not be able to serve without the use of current technology.

That will have a truly transformational impact on the pediatric patients who participate in our programs, and we can achieve that with the proper funding and guidance.  A grant from SOLVE would go a long way in helping us achieve that goal.

Within five years, we'd like to greatly increase the number of volunteers we have, grow our board and hire more employees.  We already have some great new volunteers "waiting in the wings" for us to raise the funds to be able to include them.

And we would be thrilled to be able to offer them the technology to be a part of what we are doing regardless of their location and their current ability to attain the proper equipment and programs to be able to serve our young patients in the best way possible.

Those goals will be achieved by increased fundraising efforts, applying for grants and bringing more attention to the work that Drawn To Help is doing.

We plan to utilize social media and technology to enable us to reach those goals.

The main way we can measure our progress is to count the number of hospitals and treatment facilities we are reaching.  At each location that opens their doors to us, we end up working with hundreds of children, sometimes thousands over a long period of time.

The graphic below shows how extensive and successful our outreach is:

Since this graphic was created, we have continued to expand by launching programs that are broadcast to patients remotely at the Children's Hospital of San Antonio in Texas and utilized technology by sending our special flash drives to staff members at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, satellite offices of Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Wolfson Children's Hospital in Jacksonville and several other locations that requested them.  In total, we have shipped almost 500 flash drives to locations serving children battling severe medical challenges.

We also began serving Carle Health in Champaign, Illinois.

During the height of the pandemic, we were not able to see the children in person, and some programs were temporarily suspended.  But we are now being invited back to many locations to do television broadcasts or serve the children remotely.

We expect to be returning to many of the hospitals soon, and are actually going back to two camps for children who are battling cancer this summer.

Another way we can track growth is through the number of flash drives and other gifts we send to patients and hospitals.

With the proper funding, we'll be ready to return to each location we've already served and open up new services at hospitals we've never been to before, and we are preparing for that eventuality.

Art can transcend language barriers and physical borders. We use cartoons to do just that, and bring the healing power of art to a wide range of pediatric patients.

Drawn To Help's Theory of Change for the Horizon Prize Is as follows:

Inputs: Increased funding

Recruitment of new volunteers.

Use of the best technology available to accomplish our goal of reaching as many young patients as possible with our uplifting, healing programs.

Activities: To strengthen our financial position through grants, auctions and other fundraisers.  The more money we have at our disposal, the more we can accomplish, and the more young lives we can touch in deep and powerful ways.

We are actively seeking new volunteers for all of the activities that we provide.  That includes more artists who will contribute their work to our digital art activities, create fun instructional videos for our patients to use, volunteer for in-person visits and provide autographed books for Drawn To Help to give to the children when we see them or ship to the hospitals that are utilizing our programs remotely.

Drawn To Help is also planning to expand our board with new and diverse members to help guide us towards accomplishing all of our goals and properly  sustaining our programs.

We plan to continue to expand our use of technology, which became critically important when the pandemic hit.  Out of diversity, ingenuity grew, and enabled us to keep going.

Drawn To Help wants to explore new possibilities, and take advantage of any technology that will help us continue assisting young patients on their road to recovery.

Outputs: We are striving to increase our ability to reach as many children with medical challenges as we possibly can.

We want to enhance our sustainability, utilizing every opportunity to do that whenever we can.  We're open to any suggestions and solutions that anyone might present to us, and are seeking supporters to be involved with our progress.

Using the best technology available will enable us to reach more patients and fulfill our mission.  Every child counts.  The children we serve are some of the most marginalized in society, and a valuable asset to all of us.  We want to assist them in their development, growth and quality of life.

Outcome: Our inputs, activities and outputs will lead to an outcome that will be truly amazing. Following this path will increase our ability to reach more patients in large numbers, in underserved areas and even at home if they are confined there instead of in a treatment facility.

Drawn To Help wants to create a large and diverse organization that serves every pediatric patient we possible can reach.  We want them to see themselves in our volunteers and staff.  We want to inspire them not only to keep fighting, but to see how much helping others can accomplish.

We want them to feel important, loved and cared for.

As we build our funding and our staffing, we'll be able to utilize the best technology available. And we'll put that to use to make sure that even the most marginalized patients can use our services.

We also want to help create a model that we can share with others, so it can be easily replicated in other parts of the world.

Impact: With all of these things combined, we can bring the healing power of art to patients everywhere.

Drawn To Help is utilizing traditional methods of creating art combined with modern technology.  We visit children in hospitals both in person and virtually, using Zoom and similar programs to reach patients who we might never get to serve otherwise.

Our volunteers sit next to children in their hospitals rooms, and when they cannot do that they use cameras in their homes to transmit drawing lessons to in-house closed-circuit television stations located inside the hospitals.

Those broadcasts are seen by the children in their beds, and in group settings.  They can interact directly with the artists via messaging during the shows or sometimes by talking directly to them.

This use of technology also allows us to do individualized visits with patients who are not currently in the hospital, but are being treated at home and feeling very isolated. 

We are also creating flash drives that host art activities and fun instructional videos from some of the kids' favorite cartoonists and children's book illustrators. These will be updated and expanded on a regular basis as new material becomes available.

We use programs like Photoshop and Illustrator to create digital files of art that we share with children battling difficult medical challenges.

Patients can print out the art activities on those flash drives and color them by hand, or they can import them into art apps and color them digitally.

The core technology that we are using is digital cameras, closed-circuit television systems and flash drives.

It would be simply amazing if in the future we could also create content for similar programs utilizing virtual reality.

Drawn To Help is currently a small organization doing great things.  We have a diverse leadership team.  Our board currently consists of four people, and we plan to expand our number of board members in the coming year.  We want to be as inclusive as we can.

Our founder and Executive Director is Steve Barr.  He's been writing and drawing cartoons and having them published since he was in elementary school!

Steve began doing visits to children in hospitals several years ago, thinking it would be something he would do every now and then.  But when he witnessed the incredible power those visits had, he realized that he had to make expansion of the programs his mission in life.

Utilizing his vast connections in the world of cartooning and children's book publishing, he created Drawn To Help as a fiscally sponsored program and recruited incredible volunteers who quickly took our fun and healing art programs to multiple hospitals in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.

As Drawn To Help continued to expand, the next natural step to continue growth was to form a nonprofit organization and seek more funding. And to do that, Drawn To Help needed to form a board of Directors.

Amy McGuire is our Vice President.  She has an amazing background in nonprofit work, and has devoted her life to doing good works.  Amy is an incredible asset to the team, and provides essential guidance and leadership.

Robert Butts is the newest addition to our team.  A lifelong fan of cartoons and comics, he's also a paralegal with a law firm based in Philadelphia.  Robert can provide guidance regarding any legal issues that might arise, help us prepare documentation and use his contacts in the comic book world to help us continue to grow.

Board Member James West is a native of the U.K., currently living in New England.  James brings a wealth of knowledge about grants to our board, having served as a grant advisor with The Pollination Project for several years.  The Pollination Project was the first organization to give Steve Barr a grant to continue hospital work when his programs were in their infancy.   James recognized the value and importance of what we wanted to do, and became involved from the start.  James now works in the technical field, and provides guidance and inspiration as Drawn To Help works to increase their use of technology and expand our operations.

We all love the diversity of our team, and what each member brings to the table.

We just want to do everything we can to help ease the pain, suffering and stress that young patients experience throughout their battles with severe medical challenges.

We recognize that EVERY child is special, has something to offer to the world, and should be treated with respect and understanding.

And we are very committed to the following:

Drawn To Help does not and shall not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion creed, gender, gender expression, age, national origin (ancestry), disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or military status, in any of its activities or operations. These activities include, but are not limited to, hiring and firing of staff, selection of volunteers and vendors, and provision of services. We are committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of our staff, clients, volunteers, subcontractors, vendors, and clients.

Although we currently only have one paid employee, and the rest of our organization is comprised of volunteers, we do hope to expand dramatically in the coming years. Drawn To Help is an equal opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and will take affirmative action measures to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the bases of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

Drawn To Help serves children in hospitals. We provide compassion, inspiration, encouragement and happy moments to kids who are suffering through extremely difficult times.

Many are lonely and isolated.  And bored.  We help fix that! Drawn To Help provides what is known as "pleasant distraction", a method of helping pediatric patients forget about the ordeals they are going through, giving them a sense of normalcy and helping build up their self-esteem.

We provide these services by sending volunteers to spend time with them, laugh with them, create art with them and cheer them up.

While our model began with just in-person visits, the pandemic caused us to move rapidly into providing digital services to the kids we serve.

So we now do remote visits using the technology we have available to us.

There is never any cost for what we do.  The patients, their parents and the facilities that are treating them are never charged.

We reach out to hospitals and camps that are serving pediatric patients and offer them our services.  And, as we've grown, they have begun seeking us out and asking if we can visit their facilities.

These young patients need us.  That is evident every time we visit hospitals or interact with the children through Zoom meetings or television shows broadcast directly to their rooms.

As an example, one time one of our volunteers visited a hospital in Florida.  They went room to room with one of the caregivers at that hospital, and a caricaturist joined them.

After visiting several other patients, the caregiver took them to the room of a young woman who was battling cancer.  She was in a deep depression, and that hospital employee told us that the patient probably wouldn't even want us to come into her room.  She was battling deep depression due to her battle with cancer, and had not spoken in weeks.  She refused to talk to her parents, her doctors and her nurses.

But we tapped on the door and when she heard there were cartoonists there to visit her, she stunned everyone by sitting up and inviting us to come in.

We spent about an hour with her, laughing, drawing funny pictures and talking.

By the time we were done, she actually slid across the bed, slipped herself into her wheelchair, wheeled herself to the other side of the room and excitedly began talking to her parents about what she wanted to do when she went home.

When we walked into her room, she was so depressed she was barely moving and uncommunicative.  And by the time we left, she was sharing her dreams and talking about her future!

That is the power of what we do.  That is the value of what we do.

We have seen similar things happen everywhere we go.

The hospital staff sees it, and we're invited back.  And, they tell others in the field that work at different locations, and we get to visit the children there.

We don't consider any of the children we serve, their families and the treatment facilities they are in as customers.  They are friends.  And they are human beings who need our help.

We provide these services through grants and donations.  There is never

Drawn To Help will, of course, continue to seek funding through grant applications and reaching out to donors who have helped us in the past.

We recently set up a GoFundMe page to raise funds, and to make the public more aware of what we do.

We do regular fundraisers on Facebook, and those have been very helpful.

In the near future, we will be selling and auctioning a vast number of original signed pieces of cartoon art and autographed animation cels that have been donated to us from luminaries in the fields of cartooning, animation and children's book illustration.

These pieces of art are highly collectible, and were given to us by their creators to help sustain Drawn To Help's work. Art donations have arrived from all around the globe!

Drawn To Help will also be hosting informational booths at large gatherings, where we'll share our work with the public and give them opportunities to take selfies with some of the awesome large cartoon figures that we have.  Donations are not required in order to snap a fun selfie, but they are suggested and highly appreciated.

Many of these statues are unique and one-of-a kind.  Young patients love taking pictures with them, and so does the public.

We also have other collectible cartoon items to auction and sell, like framed prints, toys and figurines.

Our bookkeeper Nicole is in the process of setting up some online auctions for us, and is donating the time she is spending doing that because she believes in what we're doing with all of her heart.

We're working on some other really unique fundraising ideas, and are openly seeking suggestions for even more so that we can continue to survive, grow and thrive.

We've received fairly large donations annually from one of the world's most successful children's book authors and illustrators and his wife, who wish to remain anonymous.  And we've also received sizable donations from another couple who love what we're doing, but also have requested to remain anonymous.

In the past, we've received grants from The Pollination Project, The Ella Lyman Cabot Trust, ArtForMoore and The Tides Foundation.

We've received smaller gifts from hundreds of donors over the past few years, mostly through Facebook fundraisers and outreach through our organization's Facebook page.

Drawn To Help has also privately approached folks who are in the cartoon and book industry who have become a part of what we're doing, either by contributing financially or donating gifts for the kids and art to assist our fundraising efforts.

We have begun to reach out to celebrities who fund projects related to health and pediatric programs, and some who have experienced the healing power of art personally.

We've also hosted a few public events where we accept donations while sharing our mission with attendees, and will be going more of those in the future.