The Heart Touch Project receives generous grant from S. Mark Taper Foundation

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (March 17, 2007) – A $25,000 grant from the S. Mark Taper Foundation, has enabled the Santa Monica-based nonprofit organization, The Heart Touch Project, to expand their Children’s Program to serve critically ill children six to eighteen years of age with their Heart Touch® Massage Therapy.

“Our Heart Touch® program at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles has been very well received,” said Children’s Program Director Tina Allen. “The program has provided demonstrable benefit that we are excited to extend to older children. Now, thanks to the S. Mark Taper Foundation, The Heart Touch Project can continue its mission of serving children in need regardless of age.”

The Heart Touch Project has been successful in developing and managing a comprehensive pediatric massage program, inaugurated at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles and slated for Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Historically this program has only had funding to provide services for hospitalized children zero to five years of age. Now with the generous support of the S. Mark Taper Foundation, The Heart Touch Project will be able to expand services within Childrens Hospital Los Angeles as well as to Mattel Childrens Hospital at UCLA and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to provide much needed healing touch therapy to older children.

"Ever since attending the Heart Touch Volunteer Training, I have been eager to bring Heart Touch Services to the children at Mattel Children's Hospital,” said Samantha Drohan Betti RN, Director of Acute Pediatrics at Mattel Children’s Hospital at UCLA. “We are required to do so much uninvited 'poking and prodding' in the hospital that it is a true joy to offer purely nurturing, compassionate touch to our children."

About the S. Mark Taper Foundation:

The S. Mark Taper Foundation, founded in 1989, is a private family foundation dedicated to enhancing the quality of people’s lives by supporting nonprofit organizations and their work in our communities. The S. Mark Taper Foundation has a special interest in funding a variety of issues, including aging, arts, children, the economically disadvantaged, health and human services.

About The Heart Touch Project:

Since it’s inception in 1995, The Heart Touch Project has been Southern California’s only non-profit educational and service organization dedicated to providing compassionate and healing therapeutic touch to ill and isolated men, women and children. Heart Touch® programs utilize professional volunteers who have been trained in a method of compassionate touch therapy which takes into consideration the emotional, physical and spiritual well being of each individual client. Heart Touch® is currently expanding their programs to reach people in the global community, as well as, on the national level through their Heart Touch™ Training.



For more information:
Tina Allen
The Heart Touch Project
310.391.2558 ph 310.391.2168 fx
tina@hearttouch.org
http://www.hearttouch.org

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