Bradys Smile

Causes: Emergency Assistance, Human Services

Mission: Brady's smile, inc. Was organized exclusively for charitable purposes. Specifically, brady's smile, inc. Will promote, improve, protect and sustain the health, emotional well-being and social development of children in need, including children suffering from illness or disability, children at risk and under served children. It is our goal to help in the following ways: 1) help make life easier in the newborn and pediatric intensive care facilities for patients and their families; 2) provide financial assistance to defray medical expenses; and 3) establish and grant scholarships to educational institutions benefiting children in need. In 2017, brady's smile's programs serve patients mainly in pediatric and newborn intensive care units ("icu") in 16 pediatric hospitals across 8 states.

Programs: Our comfort bags program provides basic essentials to caregivers and toys to babies and children who are in the icu of children's hospitals. Our bags include items such as toiletries, a pen, paper, snacks, stuffed animals and toys. During 2017, brady's smile distributed 2,331 comfort bags to families in the icu.

our brady blankets program provides homemade fleece blankets to babies and children during their time in the icu. During 2017, brady's smile distributed 1,246 blankets to children in the icu.

our meals program provides home cooked dinners or lunch to children and their parents while in the icu. Brady's smile teams up with local restaurants and serves these meals. During 2017, brady's smile served 2,430 meals to people in the icu. Also during 2017, brady's smile started providing coffee and breakfast items as part of this program.

this year our smiles in a box program helped provide enhanced 'comfort bags' to children who were not in our partnering children's hospitals. This included helping 4 families out with items they needed to help assist their critically ill children. We distributed items like gas cards and holiday gifts and dinners to help families during this hardship. We also 'adopted' a family during the christmas holidays at yale-new haven children's hospital and bridgeport hospital to provide toys and presents to a deserving family through their child life program (our fifth year in a row).

our music in the icu program provides music to our partnering hospitals. For the third year in a row we hired a harpist to play at the icu four hours a month at one of our partnering children's hospital. Our harpist played for approximately 450 people throughout 2017.

this year is our second year in a partnership with bridgeport hospital to help provide toys and other services to their 'toy closet. ' we consider this to be similar to our comfort bag program, but this program provides toys to babies in the nicu as needed throughout their stay, as well as inpatient children who complete various procedures during their stay. In 2017, we provided 500 toys for children/babies at bridgeport hospital.