Kid Flicks was founded by sisters Lexi, Berni, Marni, and Romi Barta

Kid Flicks was founded by Lexi, Romi, Marni, and Berni Barta in the Spring of 2002. We were doing some “Spring cleaning” and realized we had a number of DVDs we had either outgrown or no longer watched. Since a friend of ours had been treated for Leukemia and we knew that she watched movies to help her pass the time and distract her while she was in the hospital, we took our movies to the Pediatric Oncology Department of the Los Angeles hospital where she had been treated. When we dropped off our donations, the Child Life Specialist told us that “movies are the first things kids ask for when they are in the hospital.” That afternoon we decided to collect as many DVDs as possible to donate to as many hospitals as possible. We wrote solicitation letters to family and friends, and within the first week, we had over 100 movies. Donations continued to pour in. We decided that each hospital would receive a “movie library” of 100 assorted films that appeal to boys and girls, toddlers through teenagers. Whenever we had another 100 movies, we found another hospital to donate them to.

We increased donations by contacting movie studios and production companies and organizing collection drives at our schools. Our former pediatrician advertised Kid Flicks in a weekly on-line newsletter that went to the 2,000 families in her practice. Word spread, and soon people began organizing Kid Flicks collection drives at their own schools and through their Brownie Troops and religious schools. TV news and radio interviews, as well as newspaper and magazine articles, continually help to spread the word about Kid Flicks, and as a result, hardly a week goes by that we don’t receive dozens of donations from all over the country.

Initially, we delivered the “movie libraries” to hospitals in Southern California. When we had covered every hospital within a five-hour round-trip driving radius, we began applying for grants and awards to help cover the costs of shipping the “libraries” to other cities and states. As of  June 19, 2017 Kid Flicks has donated 124,300 movies to over 1000 hospitals and long term care facilities for medically fragile children throughout the United States and South Africa.

You can contact us at kidflicks@aol.com.