welcome

Jen’s Kids is an outreach program of the Riverside Arts Center that provides therapeutic art activities for children under hospital care. Covid continues to impact our program. Currently, we have no sessions with inpatients at the Loyola University Medical Center Children’s Hospital in Maywood, Illinois. We have one facilitator who visits once or twice a week at the Loyola Outpatient Center Pediatric Oncology Treatment Center while outpatients receive treatment. We are working to staff the open inpatient sessions and we are currently looking for new facilitators.

To supplement the fewer sessions, we are creating donations of art supplies for a variety of age groups at multiple hospitals in the Chicago area. This will allow us to continue to provide art experiences for children hospitalized until we are again able to staff more in-person sessions.

"Thank you for making me feel as special as the snowflakes we made during craft time." - quote from patient, age 5

Jen’s Kids is funded by private donations. Administrative costs are minimal so that virtually all of the money donated is spent on the facilitators and art supplies. Your donation will help us to continue and to expand this program.

For more information, please contact [email protected] or the Riverside Arts Center.

Jen’s Kids was established in loving memory of Jennifer Lynn Allen, June 1970-June 1997

“You have to be a friend to have a friend. It takes a special kind of magic that comes from within each and every one of us.” – Jennifer Lynn Allen