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Sparkling Angel Charities, the Kelly Weaver Memorial Fund,
was founded in September 2001 as a memorial to Kelly Weaver
who died suddenly at the age of 21 from an undiagnosed heart
condition called Long QT Syndrome.
Kelly held a strong compassion to help children with special
challenges in their lives. Our goal is to perpetuate Kelly’s
philanthropy through partnering with existing community-based
organizations and creating new identification programs to
provide valuable research based services to target populations.
Sparkling Angel Charities is actively educating the community
about the dangers that heart irregularities pose to our young
children. In cooperation with the local medical community,
we have an ongoing program that provides EKG screenings for
young people. Hopefully, these screenings will lead to early
detection of heart irregularities such as Long
QT Syndrome, which alone is responsible for thousands
of deaths per year among otherwise healthy young people.
Sparkling Angel Charities has set a goal to screen 15,000
high school students by the end of 2011. Data collected will
be used by researchers to refine the criteria for diagnosing
Long QT Syndrome and to expand LQTS awareness to help reduce
the 3,000 deaths of young people each year.
Sparkling Angel Charities has also formed a relationship
with Providence
Speech and Hearing Center, which is a non profit organization
that has been helping hearing- and speech-impaired young people
for over 20 years. As part of this relationship, Sparkling
Angel Charities helped to fund a new playground at Providence
that is completely accessible for young children with special
needs.
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