Come and walk!

The 2nd Annual CHD Awareness Walk in Alexandria is almost here! Do you live around the area? Spend an hour of your morning on September 10th to walk around beautiful City Park! Too far away to attend? Donate to this great cause today!

As with any nonprofit organization, fundraising is an important and crucial piece for Lasting Imprint. Where exactly does our money go?

CHD Family Kits
These kits are a collaboration of various groups to provide families affected by congenital heart defects support both in the hospital and at home. They include items such as lotion, coloring books and crayons, chap stick, Angie's Kettle Corn, and soon, Lasting Imprint water bottles! At its peak up to 125 kits may be given out in just one month!

CHD Family Activities
Funds help put on not only support meetings for our families, but fun activities with little or no cost. We know and understand that such activities are often rare due to time in the hospital and/or expense. We try to plan an activity in various locations every other month or so. This is also an important time for parents and children to get together and build relationships that last for years.

Marketing Opportunities
Lasting Imprint puts up posters at various hospitals, clinics, and the Ronald McDonald Houses. Our newsletter connects families and friends located throughout the state of Minnesota (and world!). Lastly, our new window clings not only spread our name, but more importantly the statistic of CHD so hopefully one day it will be as well known as other health conditions.

Research
We make a donation to research at the end of each fiscal year by giving to the Children's Heart Foundation. This is a great group of people that put their time and energy into making sure that all monies go to the best and most promising research. This is an important piece to many of us so it only makes sense that we work together!

Early Detection
This is our next big step now that we have established the ground work of the organization. Early detection takes a more proactive approach to CHD. By talking with medical professionals we are trying to figure out how this can be done most effectively. One idea is the creation of informational handouts to be given to pregnant women before their 20 week ultrasound. Maybe we can help people start asking "Is my baby healthy?" before they ask "Are we having a boy or a girl?" I think the biggest problem is that we aren't told and so we just don't know. We hope to develop a more definite plan this fall so stay tuned!

All I can say now is come on out and walk with us! I promise, you'll learn about and meet some pretty special people if you do.