Three years ago, my three sisters and I were doing some spring-cleaning when we realized that we had a lot of children's videos that we had either outgrown or no longer watched. We remembered how a few years earlier, when my friend Alex had been in the hospital being treated for Leukemia, she would watch movies to pass the time. We decided to take our videos to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the hospital where Alex had been treated.

When we delivered our videos to the Pediatric Oncology department at Cedars, the reaction we got was astounding. The nurses were so grateful to receive anything that would help to distract the young patients from the boredom and fear that goes along with being hospitalized. In fact, the Child Life Specialist told us that "movies are the first thing kids ask for when they are in the hospital." On the car ride home, we decided to collect as many videos as possible to donate to as many hospitals as possible. We named our new organization Kid Flicks.

We began by mailing letters to friends and family asking them for tapes and DVDs. We offered to pick up donations anywhere within the Los Angeles area or people could drop their donations off at our house. Within the first week, we had 100 movies which we donated to Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. The donations kept pouring in.

Every time we collected another 100 movies, we found another hospital to donate to. We would sort through the movies to make sure each hospital got a variety of films that would appeal to toddlers through 18-year-olds, as well as boys and girls. Each hospital received a "movie library" of 100 assorted films.

We also started "movie collection drives" at our schools. At the time, my younger sister, Berni, and I were in elementary school. My sister Romi was in Middle School, and my sister Lexi was in High School. These drives, which we have continued to run, were so successful, that we began soliciting donations through our Hebrew School and other Los Angeles area synagogues. Our pediatrician, Dr. J.J. Levenstein, sends a weekly on-line newsletter to the 2,000 families that make up her practice and includes a paragraph about Kid Flicks and how people can donate. Just about every week, we pick up bag loads of videos from Dr. J.J.'s office or drive to her patients' homes to get them. We have recently begun movie drives through our dentist's and orthodontist's office.

In addition to all of the "gently used" videos and DVDs we were donating, we wanted to be able to include new, recently released movies to the hospitals. We wrote solicitation letters to movies executives and producers and received hundreds of new videos and DVDs from DreamWorks and 20th Century Fox Home video, as well as other companies.

Initially, we drove the "movie libraries" to the hospitals we were donating them to. Once we covered all of the Pediatric Departments of Los Angeles hospitals, we donated to hospitals in Orange County, Palm Springs, San Diego and Santa Barbara. We were willing to drive to any hospital that was within a 5-hour round-trip. Once we had donated to all of those hospitals, we knew we would have to find a way to raise money to ship the donations to hospitals that were further away, so we began applying for grants and awards to pay for shipping costs. So far, we have raised $2,000 from three different organizations: a Do Something Grant; the Kavod organization, a tzedakah collective; and ABC7 News, which also featured a story on us that included interviews and footage of us making a donation at a hospital.

Our goal is to donate Kid Flicks "movie libraries" to every Pediatric Department and Children's Hospital in the country. So far, we have donated 4,500 movies to 45 different hospitals throughout the United States. Kid Flicks is going strong: we receive donations every week and continue to apply for grants and awards to help cover shipping costs.

We have received dozens of thank-you notes from the hospitals that we have donated to, although I have to admit the most memorable "thank-you" we received was when we delivered a "movie library" to one hospital where we took the movies into the children's playroom and we got to see how excited the patients were to sort through the movies. They had even made a poster that said "Thank You Kid Flicks" that was waiting for us when we arrived.

If you would like more information on Kid Flicks or are interested in donating videos or DVDs, contact us at kidflicks@aol.com.

Marni Barta is a founding member of Kid Flicks and also volunteers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.