Mission
Bring joy, inspiration, and connection to hospitalized children by providing live, online creative arts classes with inspiring artists.
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The Need
Children in hospitals face overwhelming challenges:
* Serious medical conditions
* Boredom
* Isolation from friends and family
* Uncertain futures
They need opportunities to just feel like regular kids again. StudioX gives children a way to leave behind their illness, have fun being creative, and connect with other kids and inspiring mentors.
What We Do
StudioX improves the lives of children in the hospital by providing live, virtual creative arts classes with inspiring mentors.
Online Creative Arts Classes
We connect kids with the best creative professionals available, virtually. Through live, online video classes, our volunteer artists bring the magic of drawing, animation, magic, cartooning (and more!) to kids who can benefit from it the most. Classes are conducted in online groups, allowing kids to have a shared experience with other hospitalized kids,
All sessions are held in a secure, child-safe digital environment. Kids may participate from hospital activity rooms or, for kids who are in isolation, right from their hospital room.
Join Us
Non-profit organization
StudioX is envisioned as a non-profit organization that works in and outside of the hospital. Funding sources range from individual financial donations to corporate sponsorships to in-kind donations. Funds are used for developing unique programming content, integrating with hospital infrastructure, and providing trained, professional oversight to monitor children’s online experience.
Hospital Partnerships
StudioX actively seeks partnerships with hospitals to integrate with or augment existing Child Life services and activities.
Volunteer Artists
StudioX understands that volunteers need guidance and training to successfully develop and deliver classes for kids in the hospital. Once volunteers have passed the appropriate background checks and screening, they're eligible to enroll in the StudioX volunteer program. Volunteers are provided with sensitivity and privacy guidelines as well as course curation and review. The StudioX volunteer program is designed to build a community of active, passionate mentors.
Corporate partnerships
Many creative and tech industry companies want to give back to the community, but often don’t have the infrastructure to offer their employees consistent, accessible volunteer opportunities. Through strategic partnerships with StudioX, companies can easily provide rewarding, on-site community service opportunities for their employees. These morale-boosting programming partnerships include meeting the strict content compliance standards that the creative and tech industries demand, flexible scheduling, and transparent reporting.
Contact Us
To find out how you can help, please contact us at: dhuber4@gmail.com
Our Story
In 2017, when Deborah Huber’s 14-year old son, Jack, was at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital receiving a bone marrow transplant to treat a rare, life-threatening blood disease, one of the many challenges he faced was the boredom and loneliness of being isolated from his everyday life and friends. During his stay at the hospital, Rob Goldman, a colleague of Deborah’s, gave Jack and two friends drawing lessons through FaceTime. The experience was game changing for Jack--it expanded his world, giving him something creative to do and a way to connect with people beyond the walls of the hospital.
Deborah and Rob were inspired to give other hospitalized kids the opportunity to learn creative arts such as drawing, animation, writing, cartooning, etc. from talented artists and connect with other hospitalized kids right from their room, using live streaming video technologies.
And StudioX was born.
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Our Team
Our team is led by Deborah Huber and Rob Goldman.
Deborah Huber
Deborah has over 20 years of experience design and product development expertise. She has developed and led the implementation of digital product concepts for companies large and small, including Marvel, Late Show, Harper Collins, IBM, Ford Motor Co,, and AOL. She was a board member of the non-profit BayKids Studios for seven years and and has an MA from Stanford University in Interactive Educational Technology.
Rob Goldman
Rob Goldman is digital product strategy and marketing expert with over 20 years of experience in software product development, marketing, and management. Rob’s focus has been on Communications Strategy, Web, Mobile, Cloud, Analytics, and Application Development. . His experience spans from startups to major enterprises such as mFoundry, Medior, AOL, Netscape and FIS.