Saratoga News John Holland-McCowan of Kids Cheering Kids dances with Katia Fong at Scribbles and Giggles in Saratoga.Photograph by George Sakkestad Children's Crusade Youngsters who started an outreach program are part of a growing trend By Jeff Kearns It's clear from the smiles at Scribbles and Giggles, the Saratoga pediatric daycare center for medically delicate children, that no one knows more about cheering up young people than other young people. Once a week, during activity time, the young people come in to the center to play and read. Volunteers are members of Kids Cheering Kids, and new chapters are forming. The founder was 6-year-old John Holland-McCowan, who was just 4 when the germ of an idea about helping other children began to take shape. He was sitting on a beach in Hawaii with his mother talking about toys. Some children, she said, didn't have any toys at all. John didn't like that. "He started crying, and said, 'That's not right,'" remembers his mother, Anne Holland-McCowan. When he got home, John took matters into his own hands and started saving his allowance. He decided he would save his pennies until he could buy some toys on his own for children who didn't have any. Then he started telling his friends what he was doing and urged them to liberate cash from their piggy banks as well. The ball got rolling, and the young people called a meeting. They let their parents participate. Although the grownups were nice enough to find some places where youngsters could take the toys and books, the children decided that wasn't good enough. John told his mother he wanted to play with the children, too. Maybe, he thought, they needed some friends. Holland-McCowan took John to an area shelter for abused and neglected children, where he started going regularly to play with George. Holland-McCowan agrees that the young people's instinct to do more than deliver toys was a good one. "It was really important for him to interact and play with the kids," she says. Eventually, after going to the shelter for about three months, John wanted to get his friends involved, too. In January 1998, over wine and pizza, Holland-McCowan, her friend Cheryl Driver, and some of the other adults at the meeting decided to form a nonprofit organization, and Kids Cheering Kids was born. Sort of. John, now 6 and the other youngsters, including Driver's daughter Lauren, 7, decided to call the group simply Kids Helping Kids--until they learned that someone in New York already had that idea, and had registered the name for a spin-off organization of UNICEF. "John said, 'let's cheer them up,' and it became 'cheering' instead," Holland-McCowan says. The name Kids Cheering Kids was registered, and the group became a nonprofit organization. Holland-McCowan set up headquarters in a back room in her house in the Los Gatos hills. After that, word started to spread. "It really got out by word of mouth, and it just spread like wildfire," Holland-McCowan says. Some referrals come from the Volunteer Exchange of Santa Clara County, where KCK was registered as a nonprofit volunteer group, and others come from the KCK Web site. John's friend George from the shelter, however, wasn't around for long. He was placed in a foster home. "Somebody liked him and they wanted to keep him, so he got a new mom and dad," John says. "His parents were in jail, and he really loved his mom and dad, but they were in jail." He remembers his friend as "a joyful boy. He likes to laugh and eat pizza." Now, John and about 13 other KCK members from Los Gatos, Campbell, Saratoga and West San Jose make up the core of the organization in the West Valley. They range in age from 5 to 23. KCK has two boards, one consisting of nine young people who sit on the youth board, and meet quarterly, and the other of eight adult directors, who meet monthly. And the organization, it seems, is part of a growing trend--young people who are ditching their apathy. "It's becoming very popular," says Jill Jacobsen, conference director at Service Learning 2000, a professional development organization in Palo Alto which works primarily with teachers who want to use service as a teaching aid. "We're seeing a lot of these youth-generated outreach efforts." Jacobsen says they have become more and more popular since she started out at Service Learning in 1991. "There's been some recent polling of young people that indicates that they don't believe as much in formal government structures as a way of effecting change," she says. "Young people are more interested in getting involved and doing something, not waiting for someone else to do it." But in places like Los Gatos and Saratoga, Jacobsen says, the increase is also driven by other factors. "College admissions look at service now, and some employers are looking for people who are involved with their communities," she says. At the 10th annual Service-Learning Conference, scheduled for April 18-21 in San Jose, more than 2,500 guests have registered for this year's event. That's up from 2,000 three years ago. The conference, which is hosted by Service Learning 2000 and sponsored by the National Youth Leadership Council, is the only program in the country that deals exclusively with youth and service. At the conference, KCK youth board member and Los Gatos High School student, Smita Reddy, and others will be giving a 90-minute presentation on the organization called, "Kids Cheering Kids: Reaching Out, Getting Messy and Touching Lives." The main outreach program for KCK is at Scribbles and Giggles, a pediatric daycare center for medically delicate children in Saratoga, where volunteers work one day each week. The center, at the end of a cul-de-sac off Quito Road, was created five years ago as a part of the sub-acute Saratoga Hospital, located next door. Scribbles and Giggles works exclusively with children. The current group of regulars consists of 35 children, ages 7 and under. Children in the program have a variety of specialized medical needs, and the center is staffed at all times by nurses who specialize in caring for young people with such needs. Children have tracheotomies, rare chromosomal disorders, respiratory disorders and cerebral palsy, or are otherwise dependent on specialized care. Physiological problems, however, aren't always obvious. "A lot of times, you can't see there's anything wrong," director Mollie Smoke says. When activity time rolls around in the afternoon, it's all about singing and dancing--even if you're in a wheelchair. With the music playing, KCK volunteers help the Scribbles and Giggles children clap their hands and stomp their feet. It's not easy for some patients, but the exercises are designed to help build the motor skills essential to rehabilitation. KCK volunteers pair up with a patient to help with the clapping and stomping. Volunteer Smita Reddy spent a recent afternoon working with one patient, Miles. "He doesn't talk, but you can tell he's happy when he smiles," says Reddy. After activity time, it's on to reading time, as KCK volunteers read from illustrated books to help patients exercise their verbal skills. And once a month, KCK volunteers help out with Date Night, when the center stays open late and welcomes brothers and sisters to come along, too--and give parents some time to get out and have fun. A second KCK outreach program, which is still being organized, will put together outings with KCK volunteers and children from the shelter in San Jose. The first outing, just before Halloween in Vasona Park, was a picnic with mask decorating, pumpkin carving and a fishing game. A second outing is scheduled for late January at Campo di Bocce in Los Gatos, where the owners agreed to turn the place over to KCK and children from the homeless shelter for an afternoon, serving food and drinks on the house. Another KCK chapter recently began in Fremont, where 150 students at Kennedy High School formed a service club. Students in that program sign up to work once a month planning activities for children at a homeless shelter in Fremont. Two San Jose schools, Bellarmine College Preparatory and Harker Academy, are also getting ready to start their own KCK chapters. At Bellarmine, where students are required to complete 100 hours of community service to receive their diplomas, the community service club is in the process of adding KCK to its lineup of service organizations. Community Services director Patricia Page says the addition will probably become final this semester, although it depends on the club's student officers. At Harker, Dean Jack Bither says the new KCK club is still in the planning stages. Harker, which began creating its own high school with a freshman class this year, in addition to its K-8 school, already has eight students participating in KCK's Scribbles and Giggles outreach. It's up to those students to start the service club, Bither says, and when that club is founded, participation will also be open to the elementary school students. "We're looking for a long-term relationship," he adds. Harker freshman Kaileen Yen of Saratoga joined KCK about three weeks ago. "I wanted to be around kids and help the community," she says. "It just feels good to know you've helped somebody. These kids need more attention and they really need love." To learn more about Kids Cheering Kids, call 888-KIDSPLAY or 353-2033. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, January 20, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.