School Kids Raise Funds to Bring Toys and Games to Hospitalized Youngsters

lived only four short years and those were filled with hospital visits and chemotherapy for the Wilms tumors–kidney cancer–that eventually took his life. But Oscar’s memory is a blessing to kids in the U.S., Mexico and Israel through the Oscar Litwak Foundation.

“He passed away in September and we started the foundation in October,” said Sharon Litwak, Oscar’s mom. “We thought his short life had an extra meaning and something else had to be done.”

It was having toys to play with that kept Oscar going after long hours of chemotherapy and dialysis. But during his treatments, the little boy had been confined to a chair for eight to ten hours at a stretch. So his parents came up with the idea of the “mobile playroom.”

“It just makes a huge difference to the kids to be able to play with something,” said Sharon, explaining that kids who are in isolation or stuck in bed can’t get out to a playroom, which might have limited hours or supervision.

The foundation contacted the manufacturer of crash carts for hospitals, those red mobile units that can rush emergency medical supplies to patients’ bedsides. The company makes a multicolored version they call the Oscar Litwak Foundation cart that has room for toys, books and arts and crafts supplies. Foundation volunteers paste on the logo decals and load up the carts from the Sherman Oaks warehouse, kept filled with toys and games by donations from schools and synagogues in the valley.

Talia Strauss-Diner, a member of Adat Ari El and Sharon’s cousin, has been in charge of collecting new toys for the foundation from Adat’s Early Childhood Center during the synagogue’s for the last four years. When her daughter entered Adat’s Day School Kindergarten last fall, Talia approached school principal Lana Marcus with a proposal to collect toys from the entire student body. 

Marcus thought they should go even further and ask the student council to approve raising the $2,000 needed to sponsor an entire cart for a local hospital.

“One of the main missions of the student council,” said Sari Goodman, the day school’s director of general studies who attended the presentation of the cart, “is to raise money for tzedakah (charity) and every year the children choose where the money goes. This year it was dedicated to the toy cart which is very dear to their hearts because they play with toys and they have been sick, so they had a very close understanding of what this was about.”

The fifth and sixth grade officers of the council spearheaded a school-wide fundraising drive, raffling popcorn and selling sno-cones and hot pretzels, that was so successful they raised more than the required amount within only five months.

Patch was when The Oscar Litwak Foundation brought the mobile playroom to the school to show the kids what they had purchased. Their sponsorship provides not only the fully stocked cart, but keeps it stocked for two years. Toys that can be washed are continually sanitized but others like paint sets are given to patients to keep.

I was invited along for Patch.com when the foundation donated this 58^th mobile playroom to Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital for use in their Nethercutt Emergency Center. Rabbi Deborah Silver and other staff came from Adat Ari El Day School to offer a blessing for the gift. Medical personnel and child life specialists from the hospital spoke about the importance of the play cart for their new “ouchless” pediatrics protocol. We even got a visit from a young patient who had previously been confined to isolation.

Join us at the presentation by watching the video. Sharon regretted that their usual entertainment and magic show were pre-empted by the large number of patients who were confined to their rooms on that day.

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