Life's a Snap - Helping the Children

HISTORY

The Life's a Snap Foundation was founded in October 2001 by Kevin Houser and his wife, Kristen, in New Orleans, Louisiana, while Kevin was entering his second season with the New Orleans Saints.

Life's A Snap Foundation's original mission was to help support the NFL Y.E.T. (Youth Education Town) Program in the New Orleans area, as well as to benefit children with Crouzon Syndrome, which is a birth defect producing both physical and, at times, mental abnormalities – a syndrome which afflicts one of Kristen's cousins.

After a year of working with the Y.E.T. program in New Orleans, the Foundation decided to realign its mission with children with serious or life-threatening illnesses, and teamed up with the Children's Hospital of New Orleans in 2002 to provide financial support to children in the pediatric oncology section of the hospital.

One of the first programs the Foundation supported in conjunction with the Children's Hospital was the Starbright Program. Starbright is dedicated to the development of projects that empower seriously ill children to combat the medical and emotional challenges they face on a day-to-day basis. Starbright
projects do more than educate or entertain; they address the core issues that accompany illness – fear, pain, loneliness and depression – issues that can be as damaging as the illness itself.

The Starbright Program is a private online website community connecting over 30,000 kids living with a chronic and
serious illness. Kids can chat with and see celebrities by videophone that visit Children's Hospital in New Orleans from any location around the world. They can also email, read bulletin boards, find friends, learn about health care conditions, surf websites and play games – all in a private and safe environment just for them.

Starbright can be accessed by registered users from hundreds of homes and 97 children's hospitals across North America. Through this project and related service projects coordinated with the Children's Hospital, the Foundation has been able to expand the services offered to these children and their families, while following the Foundation's mission.

Kevin and Kristen are both from the Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Westlake. While spending their childhoods in Westlake, Kevin and Kristen experienced, through their relationships with some friends and family members, the impact that serious illness has on individuals and their families. Thus, the desire to extend the mission of the Foundation to the projects that support individuals with serious illness in their hometown and surrounding areas was inevitable.

This desire created a natural transition for the Foundation to partner with the Cleveland Clinic. Because of the Clinic's world renowned excellent reputation, seriously ill children from all over the country have sought treatment at the Cleveland Clinic, and Kevin and Kristen felt the great potential for some of these children to be coming in or referred from Louisiana.

Charitable Organizations Helping Critically Ill Children

In June 2003, Life's a Snap teamed up with the Children's Hospital at the Cleveland Clinic. The Clinic Hospital had just set up a new project called "Dream Room" and they were looking for private funding to support the project. Life's a Snap was there to offer the financial support. The focus of the Dream Room project offers children with serious or life-threatening illnesses an opportunity to choose a theme of their choice and have their rooms at home or at the hospital redecorated.

The inaugural project for the Clinic program came to fruition when the first Dream Room was completed for two twin brothers who were in end-stage renal failure. Life's a Snap provided the financial support for this first room project and the community response to the program has been overwhelming. Now called the “Imagine a Space” project, by the end of 2005 a total of five rooms had been completed.

In June 2004, the Life’s a Snap Foundation also participated in the American Cancer Society’s “Relay for Life” event held in Westlake and helped raise over $75,000 towards cancer research. The Foundation felt that partnering with this event was a natural extension of its mission, as many of those honored in
memoriam were children who died from cancer.

In 2005, Life's a Snap Foundation raised over $72,000 to help with the continued support of the Cleveland Clinic "Imagine a Space" project (formerly called "Dream Room",) and for the American Cancer Society to help in cancer research for breast, lung, and testicular cancers. Life’s a Snap became the first Community Sponsor of the American Cancer Society’s Westlake "Relay for Life" in June, donating over $10,000 to the event.

At the end of 2005, Wagner’s Country Inn of Westlake, Ohio asked the Life’s a Snap Foundation to assist them in an All Day Charity Buffet, and their efforts raised over $8,500 for New Orleans hospital relief after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. Kristen and Kevin Houser presented a check on behalf of Wagner’s to the Children’s Hospital in New Orleans to help purchase supplies& equipment.

With the assistance of individuals and business partners from both the New Orleans and Cleveland communities, Life's a Snap is developing strategies for increasing the awareness of the needs of seriously ill children within these communities, as well as developing strategies to increase support mechanisms for these programs.

Contact The Life's a Snap Foundation today to make a difference in Your Community!

"Imagine a Space" Kids

In 2005, Life's a Snap Foundation raised over $72,000 to help with the continued support of the Cleveland Clinic's "Imagine a Space" project (formerly called "Dream Room") and for the American Cancer Society to help in cancer research for breast, lung, and testicular cancers.