A Smoochy Way to Help a Kid…Art Heals!

This post is a departure from typical Grant Savvy conversation. I hope readers will allow the exception. Maybe this is a new topic for Grant Savvy?! Back to more grant stuff next week...

*Muah* 

It’s Friday. Life is worth celebrating. I want to do something awesome with my day. Will you help? Yes...great! Meet the Smooch! Project.

Have you ever had an experience when a photo, a painting, a color or a sound helped you manage your pain or just made you feel better? Has a song ever lifted your spirits? Have you been swept away in a painting to the point that you lost all sense of where you were standing? Pretty wonderful—right? This is the stuff that helps kids feel better. Art heals.

All week I’ve been tweeting about the Smooch! Project from Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are partnering with Children’s Hospitals and Clinics Minnesota to bring art to kids in the hospital. It’s a beautiful project and part of the hospital’s larger Arts & Healing and Urban Renewal Project. I believe with all of my heart in the value of art, music and the human touch in helping people heal. I have no doubt it works for the patient or that it creates a connection between illness and the greater world that makes healing possible. I’ve seen it. 

Here's the scoop! I’ve cleaned out my car, my purse(s), couch cushions, and junk drawers to make a donation and I want to know if you will help. I will match donations of up to a total of  $100 for the Smooch! Project if they are made today, Friday, July 15th. Your donation of $10 becomes $20, just like that! Magic! Gather the coworkers, dig through your pockets, pass on the Starbucks (gasp!)...every penny counts today! Smooch! is trying to reach the big goal of $1,000 by July 31st. **If $100 worth of matching donations don't reach Smooch! by 8pm EST, I will still donate $50**

If you can’t donate, but want to help…please spread the word!

You may not have kids who directly benefit from Children’s Hospitals and Clinics Minnesota, but this project is more than just reaching Minnesota families and sick kids. It’s also about inspiring other hospitals, families and organizations to think about the way art heals. Less pain. More smiles. It's pretty universal.

Today would be a red-letter, banner-flying kind of day if we can get one step closer to having this photography in the hospital....so that even just one kid can get lost in its beauty and simplicity enough to feel better and maybe, just maybe, start giving away more smooches of their own! 

If you donate to Smooch!, leave a comment on this blog post or send Grant Savvy an email and I will work with Bonnie to make sure the donation is made by the end of the day!

The Smooch! Project is sponsored by Springboard for the Arts, a nonprofit arts service organization. Contributions to Springboard (via GiveMN.org) on behalf of the  Smooch! Project are tax-deductible. 

You can donate to Smooch! and Children's through Razoo and GiveMN.org!

~Cheers!

*In respect to full-disclosure, I was not paid to write this post for the Smooch! Project. I was not paid to endorse them and did not receive any form of compensation for my mention of their site, organization or fundraising efforts. I just love them. That is all. Thank you.*