Beads of Courage, Inc. is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to improving the quality of life for children and teens coping with serious illness, their families, and the clinicians who care for them through our Arts-in-Medicine Programs. We believe in creating a context for caring transactions to transpire through our community and encouragement programs. Since 2005, Beads of Courage, Inc. has established collaborative partnerships in caring with hundreds of hospitals nationally and internationally and worked with several community organizations to make healing happen through the use of beads as a historical art form. Beads of Courage, Inc. is an approved public charity under I.R.S. Code Section 501(c)(3), based in Tucson, Arizona. Our Mission: To provide innovative, arts-in-medicine programs for children coping with serious illness, their families, and the clinicians who care for them. Our Vision: To advance the science of caring. Our Goals: -To transform the bedside experience of caring for children and teens with serious illness with innovative Arts-in-Medicine Programs -To model collaborative strategies to strengthen human connectedness through the gift of beads that bestow honor and express human caring -To contribute to the science, practice, and implementation of evidence-based interventions Our History: Jean Gribbon developed the first Beads of Courage program while working on her PhD in Nursing at the University of Arizona College of Nursing. Her inspiration came from her clinical practice, and from her experiences as a camp nurse at one of Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camps. With the financial support of her family and friends, Jean developed and piloted the Beads of Courage Program at Phoenix Children's Hospital in February 2003. Since then, Beads of Courage has provided arts-in-medicine programs for over 60,000 children and their families coping with serious illness in more than 300 children's hospitals throughout the world.