murmurdoc

Greetings all. As some of you know, I work in pediatric cardiology at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. My favorite part of my job is a summer camp called "Camp Oki" we have run since 2004, a place for children with life-threatening heart problems to "go to camp" when they might otherwise not have the chance. Please visit www.campoki.ca or our Facebook page to learn more about Camp Oki, or if you like everything boiled down to a one-pager, click here.

This has been a great success, and we get requests from other children's hospitals around Ontario and Canada to send their patients to our camp. Camp is funded by donors to the Hospital for Sick Children Foundation, and our bus travel up north is generously donated, but our campers from further away need to get to Toronto to meet the bus, and Air Canada's Horizons program only covers travel for medical care.

Camp Oki has an Aeroplan charitable pooling account to use for bringing campers to Toronto. June is our 2011 pledge month. If you would like to consider supporting us, please PM me, or contact me through one of the Camp's sites, and I can forward you additional information about the Camp, as well as an easy-to-complete form for your donation.

Thanks
Murmurdoc

tcook052

Glad to help. You have PM, doc.

RCyyz

So we can donate miles to help - that's easy! Please send me more info.

murmurdoc

Thanks - you have PM!

MMD

cslusarc

Why is it that SickKids fundraises nationally thinking that it is the only pediatric hosital in Canada? For example, Burger Kings in Winnipeg support SickKids rather than the Winnipeg Childrens' Hospital at the Winnipeg Health Sciences Centre.

murmurdoc

I am not authorized to speak on behalf of SickKids or Burger King, so I suppose you'd have to ask them directly (I can put you in touch with the right people at SickKids but you're on your own for BK), but I would point out that the National Grants Program of the SickKids Foundation supports pediatric research across Canada, so Winnipeg's Whopper money is not necessarily staying in Toronto. Supported by our hospital's foundation, SickKids trains hundreds of pediatric health care providers every year, many of whom return to their home provinces/countries to care for children locally.

For a number of rare/specialized conditions and treatments, SickKids is a referral centre for the entire country. Similarly, Camp Oki is Canada's only summer camp for kids with heart disease, and we welcome campers regardless of where they had surgery, or what hospital they are followed at.

Thanks for the question, and thanks to everyone who's stepped up to support our campers!

Murm

manodestra

http://www.thestar.com/freshairfund/...op-outdoor-fun

tcook052

What's up doc? Any updates on the June pledge month for us?

murmurdoc

Hi everyone, it's Camp Oki's Tenth Season and we are expecting 85 campers this year (a new record) - we are starting to plan our transportation needs. At the present time we have one camper coming from the YOW area and a volunteer counselor from YHZ.

We have successfully made the transition to Aeroplan's new Charitable Pooling Account structure and our webpage on the BeyondMiles site has been approved and activated at http://beyondmiles.aeroplan.com/eng/charity/454

Please consider even a small donation of miles. As always, you can check out the Camp Oki Facebook page or www.campoki.ca for more info and pictures/videos of Camp.

Thanks to all for their support - past, present or future.

canadiancow

Out of curiosity, do you get a tax receipt for donating miles? And if so, what value is placed on each mile?

tcook052

http://www3.aeroplan.com/help.do?tab...entLanguage=en

No; Aeroplan Miles do not have a monetary value associated with them and as such, are not eligible for a tax receipt.