By Monique Larkin
By Monique Larkin
Imagine you are at an exclusive art show, and surrounding you are the freelance artists who created the paintings, pottery and the beautiful images you see before you and guess what, they are all eager to meet you.Now imagine all of these very important artists are children.In order to raise money for the annual March of Dimes, Walk America, Kinder Care, held a silent auction along with purchasable art to whoever attended the fundraiser in the elegant library of the Mission Inn located in downtown Riverside.”There wasn’t enough room to walk when it first opened,” said Teri Davis, District Manager for Kinder Care. “This is the first art show we are using for fundraising to go towards the March… in fact every penny that we make goes to it,” Davis said.Parents, children, balloons and laughter crowded the Mission Inn library, allowing for plenty of donations to take place.”The art sells for twenty dollars a piece,” Davis said. “The children’s art was selected at parent’s permission and each parent suggested a bidding price. Some parents bought their children’s own art.” Excited children proudly wearing smiles and “V.I.P. artist” name tags proved that the children themselves were indeed eager to participate in an event that benefits someone else, moreover, premature babies.”The children didn’t have to participate,” said RCC student, Rachel Silver. ” They were told what their art would benefit… they could draw whatever they want and use whatever utensil they needed like paper, paint, crayons.” Glowing with happiness sat, March of Dimes Community Director, Pam Egger. She gushed how proud she was of Kinder Care and the children alike for their donation of time, dedication and talent.”I think this night is going absolutely wonderful,” said Egger. “I am proud of Kinder Care for allowing us to benefit from their children’s artistic hands.”Egger said that all proceeds from the silent auction and art show are donated to the Walk of America in order to support the research to find out the reason of why children are born prematurely.”Kinder Care solely supports the March of Dimes because it is their babies they take care of that they are concerned with,” said Egger, “They thought of the ‘V.I.P.’ name tags for the children to wear,” Not only did the children donate their talent, but parents, teachers and other volunteers put in the extra effort toward making the art show a success.”Teachers went out of their way in order to entice parents into buying art,” Egger said.Holding her 10 month old baby boy, Jonathan, Daisy Gaba was one of those enticed parents even though she bought her own son’s art who had two of his masterpieces in the March of Dimes art show.”I already bought the painting of his footprints,” said Gaba, “My husband was born premature… that’s why I wanted to donate to this… my husband is an inspiration.” March of Dimes researchers, volunteers, educators, outreach workers and advocates work together to give babies a fighting chance against being born premature, having birth defects and low birth weight.As the March of Dimes biggest fund-raiser, Walk America supports research that helps fight these threats to the health of 470,000 babies in the United States.Walk America participants have raised more than $1.5 billion since 1970 in order to try to save premature babies and infants with other major birth defects.