MAD- Artist

When my group was formed, we all wanted to help children with illness and disability. Illness is something that people can not control, and it doesn't seem fair that people, especially kids who are unfortunate eneough to have an illness or disability to have to suffer. Our groups goal is to improve the lives of these kids and instill confidence in them. There are many activities that these children cannot participate in either because they are in and out of hospitals and treatment or they are physically unable to do so. One of the first thing i thought about was how athletes and other celebrities would visit sick kids. It is such a small thing to the celebrity, it only takes a few hours out of their day, but it means so much to kids to be able to see their hero in person. Their are many example's of this such as Drew Brees visiting a kid in the hospital before he won the super bowl and LSU football players, Tampa Bay Bucs football players, Bobcats Basketball players, LSU female soccar players as well as others visiting sick children in hospitals. We also thought about games in hospitals to instill confidence in fun in children. We also could improve confidence in disabled children by organizing and funding intervention sessions between students and professionals. Another idea is to encourage and educate teachers how to deal with disabled and ill children and help them succeed. An example would be to encourage teachers to allow these students to have leadership roles so their fellow students respect them. The last idea and the one we decided to implement is making a "confidence carnival" for all sick children to attend. This carnival would be outside the hospital and would include fun activities as well as activities designed to instil confidence in sick children. We realized that sick children do not have normal social lives, so we wanted to create a program to help them gain confidence. The carnival will include activities such as: face painting, guest speakers, DJ's, video games, and makeovers. The event will encourage kids that they can have a happy, successful life even though they are disabled. The carnival would maximize the impact of celebrity guest speakers since many kids could meet them, and it would also provide fun as well as the educational benefit. We had a hard time deciding where to host the event and who to invite. We decided that at the hospital would make the most sense since it would allow more sick children to attend, but we wanted to make it a community event open to all so the sick children wouldn't feel "different" or "special" by their attendence. We also had to decide on programs that would allow children with different severity of illness to participate. We wanted to include everyone, but we decided that it would be too large a task if we included room visits to those unable to leave their rooms. We will try to get funding from individuals, corporations, and the government.
This carnival will allow sick children to participate in activities and social interaction that they don't usually get to do because of their illness. Hopefully through activities like our carnival, sick children will not only have fun, but also develop confidence and social skills.