Sunday, October 13, 2013

Every Bit Helps

We are helping hands in a family's journey with pediatric heart disease. Every bit helps. To make a donation and help a family in crisis,
GO HERE.
Broken Hearts of Florida awarded its first Home-Away-From-Home assistance to a family of five.

It felt good this weekend to hand over the card of encouragement and empathy, and the $600 worth of MasterCard gift credit/debit cards and gas card that were tucked inside it.

I told the new heart mom that I wished Broken Hearts of Florida could have covered all their expenses while their baby underwent open-heart surgery at UF Health Shands Children Hospital in Gainesville.

But the North Florida mom smiled; she was grateful. “Every bit helps,” she said. “This helps so much.”

Seven years ago, when Broken Hearts of Florida was founded, this kind of assistance would not have been possible. When families needed financial help, we did a shout-out – via email! – on a case-by-case basis to our other families, asking them to make a personal contribution. We were always thankful for every penny we could collect, as were the families who received maybe $50 of the $500 they needed to keep the lights on and the rent or mortgage paid.

We are humbled and thankful to provide these things to heart families who need us. We are grateful to all of the Broken Hearts contributors and sponsors, who make these gifts possible.
Please help us so that we may continue to support, educate and connect heart families in need. As that heart mom said, “Every bit helps.”
Our organization is completely volunteer-driven. All of our revenue goes straight back to helping our families get through life-changing surgeries, medical crises, and the joys and triumphs.

All of our donation information is available here. Let’s keep supporting, educating and connecting heart families.

We’ve come such a long way since then! Over the past year alone, Broken Hearts of Florida has joyfully provided:
  •         almost $2,000 in financial assistance to almost a dozen heart families
  •         on average, two to three dinners a month for families staying on the 10th and 4th floors of UF Health Shands Children’s Hospital;
  •         more than $300 worth of toiletries for families who have found themselves at UF Health quite unexpectedly;
  •         snacks and light meals through its Food from the Heart Pantry for families staying on the 10th floor at UF Health Shands
  •         almost a dozen monthly Family & Friends Dinner Nights;
  •         a full-fledged, tons-of-fun May Day Picnic for families and medical caregivers; and
  •         given out nearly 150 care packages to families in the hospital.
Your donations make it possible. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.