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The Burned Children Recovery Foundation was founded in June of 1989. Our founder, Michael T. Mathis, had a dream of helping as many children and their families overcome the pain and hardships of re-entering the community they live in as possible. To help burn survivors of all ages to live happy and full lives.
Michael, through the foundation, has helped by sending out over 95,000 information packs in 18 years. He has set a standard of giving that is truly remarkable. Although the foundation is located in the Northwest, they work and help people from all across America to recover and live full and active lives. This can be seen in the operation of the only National Camp Phoenix, where the Foundation pays to bring children in from all over America for a summer camp of learning and fun.
From the very first day at camp when the children attend orientation, they are taught the skills they need to live and rise above the harassment they get in their everyday life as a burn survivor. They are given the tools to enjoy life and to teach about life as a survivor to people that do not understand. The children have fun with other burn survivors as well as people from the community. This is a tremendous tool in the lives of these children and now it is time to take it to the next level.
Every year there are children that cannot come to camp, children that get turned away because the camp can only handle so many at a time, the cost of getting the kids safely to camp, the food, and all the support items needed. The foundation has built the hope and dreams of a happy life in so many children but now we need help to reach the lives of so many more in need.
Our dream is to reach the survivors of the 250,000 children that are burned every year. To offer our outreach program to every person injured in a fire, to work with every hospital that treats them, and to give hope to every family of a burn victim.
We are entering into the largest goal the Foundation has envisioned, and with your help we will reach it. We are going to build a permanent National camp/school/rehabilitation center for burn survivors located here in the NorthWest.
This facility will be The National Offices. It will be complete with dorms for up to two hundred people at a time. Our cafeteria facility will serve the students and teach domestic skills. The gymnasium will be complete with equipment needed to train and compensate for the loss of body appendages. We will have classrooms that will be satellite linked to other educational institutions. We will have a small trauma center in our infirmary, so the volunteer doctors and EMT’s can work if needed. Our sports field will be set up to handle many different kinds of events such as soccer, softball, and many more open field sports.
This will be a year-round facility with two different programs on site, and from here we will launch some programs for off site.
- Hosting six camps a year in the summer, each lasting one week. Each camp will have up to 100 children attending and learning.
- We will house up to 100 children throughout the year teaching what most schools, because of cost, cannot or won't. This will help some of the most seriously injured children.
- The offsite work will be to teach communities about burn survival and what is involved in it.
250,000 children are burned every year. Where are the survivors? The answer is most people hide and spend a life behind doors. We intend to change that, but we need your help.
You can be part of this dream, you can affect the children that need it the most. With your generous donations we can make this dream a reality. You can help us change the world we live in to be more understanding and supportive to burn victims. So we ask you to please open your heart to the children and their families by donating now.
Please help us help the children and families that so desperately need our services. |