JCK Show: Jewelers Charity Fund gives $2 million for children's charities

William George Shuster, JCK Senior Editor -- JCK Online, 6/4/2001 2:41:00 PM

The Jewelers Charity Fund for Children, the jewelry and watch industries' own charity, has raised $2.01 million in the past year. At its Sunday evening gala during the JCK Show in Las Vegas, it gave the money in grants to three charities that care for children and to a new project in Africa for aids treatment for children.

The money had been raised since June 2000 through the charity's annual Facets of Hope fundraising dinner, a program that has put hundreds of coin canisters in jewelry stores across America and a variety of other special projects.

At the dinner, officials of the industry charity presented awards to following organizations:

*$520,000 to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. The JCFC has given $1.2 million in the past three years to the Glaser Pediatric Network, for which it was a founding member.

* $520,000 to the Wish-A-program (a collaborative effort of the industry charity, the Make-A-Wish Foundation and Jewelers of America).

* $520,000 to the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. With this donation, the JCFC has fulfilled its commitment of $1.5 million in contributions to a renovation and expansion project of the Bone Marrow Transport Clinic at the hospital.

* $450,000 in the form of a planning grant for the Glaser Foundation's "Call to Action" Project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 15% of all pregnant women are infected with HIV. The money will be used to train and treat people in stopping mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS.

Since it began in 1999, the Jewelers Charity Fund for children has raised almost $4 million in charitable contribution.