Beneficiaries: Children & Families
2011 Charity Recipients
Buckner Children and Family Services
The mission is “to protect children, promote independence and build strong families,” and seeks to fulfill this calling each day. The children who come to live with Buckner foster families have been victimized by abuse, neglect, and abandonment. Having been removed from their homes and families, these children need nurturing, strong foster parents to help them recover from their wounds and re-shape their future. Buckner has over 50 Christian foster families within the Dallas area who bring these hurting children into their homes, into their families, and into their lives to give them a safe place to live and a more stable childhood.
Buckner Foster Care in Dallas provides everything would be provided through goverment foster care, and much more counseling, medial treatment, clothes, holiday and birthday parties, summer camp, and many other kinds of client assistant and enrichment. In 2010 they cared for over 170 children.
Camp Fire USA First Texas Council
Camp Fire USA First Texas Council’s mission is to “build caring, confident youth and future leaders.” They provide a grief support camp for children which have experienced the death of someone close to them. Located at their camp in Grandbury and known as El Tesoro de la Vida (the treasure of life), this unique camp has been held each summer since 1988. The goal is to help children through the natural grieving process, offering healing and hope.
Children’s Medical Center – Foster Care Center
The ARCH (At-Risk Children) Foster Care Clinic is the only one in North Texas dedicated exclusively to providing primary medical care to foster children. It is considered a model program for providing immediate and ongoing primary care to children in the custody of Child Protective Services (CPS). Children in foster care face multiple risk factors for poor health outcomes. There include trauma from abuse, neglect and chaos at home; trauma from being removed from home, family and friends, and disrupted continuity of health care, education, and bonding when foster placements change.
In 2010, Children’s was awarded funding from The Rees-Jones Foundation to begin the implementation and evaluation of an innovative clinic-based intervention for children in foster care and to determine whether it results in improved health, health care, and school outcomes. Our funds will go to this two year pilot project began in January of 2011 and has the potential to be a national model. This project will include 300 Foster Care Clinic patients. The pilot project consists of multiple intervention components including creation of a test model to establish a multi-disciplinary program for children in foster care from birth to 18 years old.
Communities In School Dallas Region
The Mission of CISDR is to help students at risk of failure stay in school, achieve academically and graduate, to become productive and contributing members of our community. CISDR is receiving financial assistance from ETC to continue their 8 years of proven services at Reagan Elementary in Dallas ISD for the 2012 – 2013 school year. CISDR’s proven model of community-based, integrated student services provides vital support in improving student achievement, growth and success. By providing direct services to meet their needs and programs that encourage and support high academic achievement for all students, CISDR creates a framework within schools to promote positive student outcomes championing the needs of at-risk students – connecting them to resources and helping them successfully learn, stay in school and graduate.
Interfaith Housing Coalition Children’s Program
The mission is to be the Hands of Christ helping families transition to self-sufficiency and new hope. Vision: Every night, every child a home and a hope for the future. The Greater Academic Performance program is a component of the IHC Children’s Program. The children’s program provides free after school and summer care for the school age children of their adult residents – homeless families. Their well-trained and loving staff utilizes their Waldorf-inspired curriculum to help our children work through the emotional and social issues that arise as a result of their families instability. Currently 75% of the children they serve enter the program at least one or more grade levels behind. To address this they have developed GAP Program. GAP is designed to increase the probability of academic success for children in working poor, homeless families served by IFC. By providing tutoring in conjunction with their daily afterschool program, they will help close this gap and give the children the tools they need to success in school and break the cycle of generation poverty. Their goal is to ensure that 65& of children in their program are at their grade level in reading or math upon graduation from high school.
Make-A-Wish Foundation
The mission of the Make-A-Wish Foundation of North Texas is to grant the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions to enrich the human experience with hope, strength and joy. In 2001, over 1,000 children in North Texas were diagnosed with a progressive, degenerative, malignant or other life-threatening medical condition. Our one program grants the wishes of these children to enrich their lives with hope, strength and joy during a time of great uncertainty and fear. Once a child has been referred to the wish program and his/her eligibility has been confirmed, volunteer wish-granters meet with the child to find out what his/her one true wish is and then work with staff members to grant the wish. Common wishes include trips, room decorations, playgrounds and electronics.
Mercy Street
Mercy Street hopes to be used by God to spark Christ-honoring community restoration by engaging in mutually-transforming relationships with the future leaders of West Dallas. In order to spark the transformation of their poorer neighbors in West Dallas, their strategy is to build relationships with the children and work toward their growth into responsible young educated leaders who will lead the neighborhood to become a place to live and raise children. In order to do this, they place a Mentor Coordinator in each school where they have mentored students in order to manage the mentor and student relationships.
Oak Hill Academy
The mission of Oak Hill Academy is to provide specialized education for students, pre-k through 12th grade, which exhibit or are at risk for learning differences and/or social challenges. The GATE program prepares capable, college bound learning different students for an academic experience beyond high school. The PRISM program teaches highly affected students identifies with more complex learning differences, to master critical life management skills that enable them to become independent, successful, employable adults.
Trinity River Mission
Trinity River Mission is a volunteer-based community learning center that promotes literacy, encourages academic success and develops effective life skills among disadvantaged youth in West Dallas, in the belief that education connects us to life’s possibilities. Since 1988, TRM’s focus has been to promote literacy, augment academic skills, and develop educational success among children, youth, and families, with the understanding that language proficiency and educational achievement opens doors to satisfying jobs and productive futures. TRM services the needs of all children without regard to race or ethnicity.
Vogel Alcove
The mission is to provide the youngest children of homeless families with the foundation for success. The Vogel Alcove childcare program provides comprehensive childcare services to 115 homeless children each day. The center is open Monday – Friday, from 7:00 am – 6:30 pm. The children that attend the program are referred by 18 affiliate homes and domestic violence shelters throughout Dallas County. They serve 115 homeless children, ages six weeks through 5 years will benefit from the program. Annually they served a total of 350 children each year as the average child remains in the program for approximately six months.
Elizabeth Toon Partner Charities
Charities that have been selected for annual support
Camp John Marc:
Special Camps for Special Kids serves children with chronic illnesses and major physical disabilities, and the families of those children, by making possible high-quality, year-round camping experiences at Camp John Marc, a unique camp facility in Bosque County, Texas. At Camp John Marc, Special Camps for Special Kids provides cooperative programming with the health organizations, community volunteers, and pediatric hospitals also dedicated to serving these children. Camp John Marc serves children, primarily from the Dallas/Fort Worth area, with a variety of special medical needs or major physical disabilities. Each session at camp is dedicated to a particular diagnosis and campers are chosen through partnering groups and organizations. Camp John Marc primarily partners with groups affiliated with Children’s Medical Center of Dallas, Texas Scottish Rite Hospital of Dallas and Cook Children’s Medical Center of Fort Worth. Camp John Marc utilizes community and medical volunteers to provide program support and quality medical care and treatment in the camp setting.
Rise School of Dallas:
The purpose of the Rise School of Dallas is to provide the highest quality of early childhood education services to children with Down syndrome or other developmental disabilities and to children without disabilities by: providing exemplary services based on recommended practices to young children with diverse abilities and their families; offering instructional opportunities through collaboration with various academic programs at local colleges and universities; engaging in research that positively influences practice in the field of early childhood education at the local, state and national levels; interfacing with the community through outreach and public awareness activities; disseminating information and providing technical assistance to other community based agencies and affecting policy and systems change at the local, state and national levels.
Scottish Rite Hospital:
Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children (TSRHC) is a world leader in the treatment of pediatric orthopedic conditions. They strive to improve the care of children worldwide through innovative research and teaching programs, training physicians from around the world. TSRHC treats Texas children with orthopedic conditions, such as scoliosis, clubfoot, hand disorders, hip disorders and limb length differences, as well as certain related neurological disorders and learning disorders, such as dyslexia.
As a leading pediatric orthopedic center, the hospital has treated more than 190,000 children since its inception, with more than 40,000 clinic visits each year. The hospital takes a multidisciplinary approach to care, tailoring treatment to the individual needs of each child and family. All services are provided without charge to patient families.
Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center
The mission of the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center is to improve the lives of abused children in Dallas County and provide national leadership on child abuse issues. DCAC’s clients are children who have been sexually abused, severely physically abused, or children who have witnessed a violent crime or experiences extreme neglect. They are referred by law enforcement or CPS, come from all residential zip codes of Dallas County, and closely mirror the ethnic make-up of our community. Statistically, the average DCAC client is an 8 year-old girl who has been sexually abused by a male in a father role (biological father, mother’s boyfriend, step-father.) There were over 23,000 reports of child abuse last year. In approximately 6,000 of these cases, child abuse was confirmed. Nearly 2,000 of these children were brought to DCAC for expert victim services.
It has become evident that DCAC’s current facility can no longer accommodate the number of clients seen each year or house the partners and staff required to provide direct victim services. This $11 million capital campaign is for a new facility that is extremely vital to bridging the gap in service delivery for severely abused children in Dallas and providing the invaluable recovery services that help these children heal. With a new facility, space issues will no longer limit DCAC from reaching the many child victims suffering from unimaginable abuse and providing the quality of care that is commanded by these sensitive and complex cases. They except to double the number of clients currently served in the new facility within three years.
Beneficiaries of Elizabeth Toon Charities over the years
Any Baby Can
Austin Sunshine Camp
Camp John Marc
Camp Summit
Chase’s Place
Children’s Craniofacial Association
Children’s Medical Center – Palliative Care Program
Clayton Dabney Foundation
Community Partners of Dallas
Educational First Steps
Heroes for Children
ManeGait Therapeutic Horsemanship
Peaceable Kingdom – Out on a Limb Camp
Presbyterian Children’s Homes and Services
Rise School of Dallas
Ronald McDonald House of Dallas
Scottish Rite Hospital
Snowball Express
Wonders & Worries