CVS Caremark All Kids Can™

Established in 2006, CVS Caremark All Kids Can™ is focused on serving the six million children with disabilities in the country. The program is a five-year commitment of $25 million to help create opportunities for children of all abilities to learn, play and succeed. To date we have contributed more than $42 million to our nonprofit program partners and engaged thousands of our employees through CVS Caremark All Kids Can™. In 2008, the program awarded $18 million in grants to local, regional and national nonprofit partners, which comprised 63 percent of CVS Caremark’s total corporate giving.

Our Impact

CVS Caremark All Kids Can™ aims to raise awareness about the importance of inclusion; improve the ability of children with disabilities to learn, play and interact with peers; and strengthen the capacity of our partner organizations through grants and other resources.

Our Partners

To advance the work of CVS Caremark All Kids Can™ in 2008, we continued to work closely with our lead nonprofit partners: Easter Seals, VSA arts and Boundless Playgrounds. We also added two partners that will help us increase awareness of disability and inclusion issues through the powerful medium of television—the Award Winning PBS KIDS GO!(SM) Series ARTHUR® and ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

Easter Seals

Easter Seals, a leading nonprofit serving individuals with autism, developmental, physical and mental disabilities and other special needs, has been a CVS Caremark All Kids Can national partner since the program’s launch. More than $4 million has been given to the organization, including $1.1 million from the CVS Caremark All Kids Can Fund to support services in 30 cities nationwide and a $500,000 gift to support Metropolitan Chicago’s Therapeutic School and Center for Autism Research, which opened in the fall of 2008.

In 2008, the CVS Caremark Charitable Trust awarded $350,000 in CVS Caremark All Kids Can program grants to 10 Easter Seals affiliates, two of which are highlighted below:

Easter Seals Indianapolis received grants to expand opportunities for 132 children with autism and other disabilities to attend Easter Seals Crossroads’ specialized summer day camp and therapy experiences.

Easter Seals New York received a grant to enhance the Project Explore Child Development Center in Valhalla through the introduction of the CVS Caremark All Kids Can Sensory Integration Room for children living with autism and other developmental disabilities.

We are also the national premier sponsor of Easter Seals Walk With Me events which take place across the country. More than 6,000 of our colleagues supported Easter Seals by participating in or raising funds to support the walk in 2008. Over the past three years, funds raised by CVS Caremark Walk With Me Teams have increased from $350,000 in 2006 to $1.2 million in 2008.

VSA arts

VSA arts is a national nonprofit that promotes access to the arts for all people and encourages youth to express themselves through artwork. Our partnership launched in 2007 and expanded in 2008, as we joined together in a comprehensive national campaign to expand arts-based programming for children with disabilities. The All Kids Can… Create! campaign is one component of our three-pronged initiative with VSA arts Call to Create, Innovate and Participate.

Call to Create

VSA arts issues a nationwide call for art that encourages children and youth to share their creativity. Representative pieces are selected for inclusion in an exhibition in Washington, D.C. that tours nationally for two years. In 2008, VSA arts received more than 300 artwork submissions from across the country from children with and without disabilities.

Call to Innovate

Through VSA arts affiliates, teaching artists work with students and their teachers in eight-week residency programs. In 2008, we placed artist-in-residence programming in nine cities, from San Antonio, Texas to Detroit, Mich.

Call to Participate

Our colleagues volunteer with VSA arts state affiliates on community activities and events, which raise awareness about the importance of art for all. In 2008, dozens of our colleagues participated in activities and events that took place in 17 states, including Alabama, California and Ohio, among others.

“This was a chance for Grace to be recognized for her ability, not her disability. It was thrilling to see others amazed by our ‘Amazing Grace.’ As parents, we couldn’t have been more proud for her. It was exciting to see a company like CVS Caremark have an awards ceremony for children with disabilities.”
- Dawn, the mother of Grace, a VSA arts participant whose art was selected for the National Art Exhibit held in Union Station in May 2008

Boundless Playgrounds

Boundless Playgrounds is the first national nonprofit to create barrier-free playgrounds for all children to enjoy. We have been working closely with the organization since 2005 to bring more playgrounds to children across the country.

In 2008, we contributed $750,000 for new Boundless Playgrounds in Dallas, Texas and Los Angeles, Calif. which both opened in 2008; and in Boston, Mass., which is scheduled to open by mid-2009. We will continue supporting this important work in 2009, as we help build Boundless Playgrounds in Hartford, Conn.; Houston, Texas; and Colerain, Ohio.

We also launched a grant program in 2008 with Boundless Playgrounds to help communities provide adequate playground surfacing, completing the mission of making their playgrounds truly accessible. In 2009, we will be working with 15 different communities that are close to achieving their fundraising goal to help them close the funding gap needed to complete their playground projects.

“With generous support from CVS Caremark and guidance from Boundless Playgrounds, I had the opportunity to build a special place where my daughter doesn’t have to wonder if she can play. Freedom Playground is a place where Sarah and other children of all abilities are free to be.”
-Stefani Busansky, Mother and Community Leader, Tampa, Fla.

Award Winning PBS KIDS GO!(SM) Series ARTHUR®

In 2008, we teamed up with ARTHUR, the award-winning PBS KIDS GO! television series, to further educate children about disabilities and the importance of inclusion. ARTHUR celebrates the value of accepting and including kids with different abilities through characters who face challenges such as blindness, autism or dyslexia.

We are working with PBS to promote a message of inclusion to a larger audience by launching a search for a new character that will show the ARTHUR gang that children come in all shapes, sizes and abilities. The “ARTHUR All Kids Can™ Character Search” invited children to send in a drawing of their character as well as a description of what makes him or her special and unique. More than 8,500 entries were received in response to the challenge. The child with the winning idea will be featured on the ARTHUR show in 2009.

In addition to the Character Search, we worked with PBS to develop educator materials for teachers and librarians to guide conversations in their classrooms about differences among children. This expanded on the school-based outreach we began in 2007 when we created a classroom curriculum activity with Scholastic, which gave educators the opportunity to integrate inclusion and disability awareness in the classroom.

ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

We teamed up with ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” to assist deserving families who are caring for loved ones with disabilities.

For example, in one episode, filmed in 2008, we traveled to Mobile, Alabama to help the Gaudet Family, a family of eight who is very involved in their community, often putting the needs of others before their own. CVS/pharmacy assisted the family by paying off medical debt and making a significant donation to Camp Smile, an organization that was very important to the family. We also made a donation to the local Easter Seals chapter, where the mother works, to establish the Gaudet Family Literacy Center. In 2009, we will continue our partnership with ABC and participate in several additional episodes.

Evaluating our Impact

Through CVS Caremark All Kids Can, we are focused on improving outcomes related to access and services for children with disabilities, and building broader awareness about the importance of inclusion for all kids.

In 2008, we developed a new measurement model to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the program. Since the program’s inception, more than 2.8 million lives have been positively impacted through CVS Caremark All Kids Can, including those of children with disabilities and their parents, caregivers, siblings and teachers. In 2008 alone, we served nearly 118,000 children and had an indirect effect on more than one million people in their support system.

This report established a baseline measure for our efforts and will inform our continued program measurement. In addition to the output measures that are already in place, we defined four impact measures that will help enhance our ability to determine the program’s success in addressing and supporting the issue. The four new measures include:

Social Impact

Did we improve the ability of children with disabilities to learn, play and interact with peers?

Did we raise awareness about the importance of inclusion for children of all abilities?

Grantee Impact

Did we strengthen the capacity of our partner organizations through grants and other resources?

Colleague Impact

Did we engage employees through program volunteer and fund-raising opportunities?

Brand Impact

Did we strengthen the CVS Caremark brand through the program?

Moving forward, CVS Caremark will capture the data to track progress against the output and impact metrics. In addition, we plan to develop a “mini-model” so that our grantees can use our work to evaluate their own impact.