Dashboard

Visual Bucket List Foundation

A nonprofit organization

$5,780 raised by 124 donors

58% complete

$10,000 Goal

Who We Are:

The Visual Bucket List Foundation’s mission is to provide children facing severe visual impairment or complete loss of vision with unique, personalized opportunities to create lasting visual memories to color their minds in the event their world goes dark.

Imagine losing your vision. What would you wish you would have seen? What visual memories would you want to carry in your mind for the rest of your days? A loved one’s face? A landscape or landmark? An accomplishment, a seat in a cockpit or race car, a sea of smiling faces at Disneyworld, an icon in the flesh? The Visual Bucket List Foundation’s goal is to provide these individual, visual memories to children and their families, helping them cross items off of their bucket list.

What We Do:

In 2022, we were able to make Laylah's visual bucket list wish a reality. We sent her "glamping" on a Safari at the San Diego Zoo. The video from the experience is below.

https://youtu.be/JHhxau-OCuc

The Visual Bucket List Foundation enables children up to the age of 18 with severe visual impairments the opportunity to create a meaningful visual memory to last a lifetime. Each case is unique and individualized based on the child’s personal visual bucket list and their capabilities. Since VBLF's inception in 2018, the organization has been able to send children losing their vision into the cockpit with the Blue Angels, on a private safari, to view Christmas lights from the sky, to a dinosaur dig in South Dakota, on an all expense paid trip to Disney World, on an up close and personal tour of the Merriweather Circus, and on a behind the scenes tour of Mount Rushmore.

Before the end of this year, we will be sending 13 year old, Jack, and his family to spend the day with the New York Giants. Jack suffers from Knobloch Syndrome. Next summer, we will be sending 9 year old, Ethan, and his family to experience Yellowstone National Park. Ethan has Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Why Support VBLF?

 

The Visual Bucket List Foundation has no paid employees. Our goal is to be able to serve every child who approaches us with a bucket list. Being a young organization, this means nearly every dollar earned is used to provide memorable experiences for children. For this reason, the Visual Bucket List Foundation is wholly volunteer-run--a precedent set by the co-founders who themselves do not collect a salary. Since 2016, we were able to raise over $330,000 and bless over 15 families.

VBLF is founded on the principal of paying forward the many kindnesses personally bestowed upon our co-founders, and we believe that work begins by giving back to our home community of Richland County. Being the only non-profit of our kind in the United States and serving children across the country gives us the opportunity to bring media attention not only to our mission, but also to our headquarters and hometown of Mansfield, OH.

In addition to helping children check items off of their visual bucket lists, VBLF also fosters partnerships to raise awareness about visual impairments and attract individuals to Richland County. From collaborating on an eye doctor exhibit at the Little Buckeye Children's Museum, putting together an exhibit for the Mansfield Children's Festival, bringing the visual delights of the Culpepper and Merriweather Circus to Lexington, OH, and presenting to companies such as Startek and organizations such as Richland Young Professionals, VBLF strives to raise awareness of visual impairments and their impact on children.