Lubbock City Lights a Success

This year’s Lubbock City Lights success will brighten the lives of community members who use services of several charity organizations. The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) School of Medicine first-year students hosted the 18^th Annual Lubbock City Lights Charity Ball May 2. The event, along with Light Up the Night, a glow-in-the-dark 5K race held April 17, raised approximately $37,906.

Executive co-chairs for the Lubbock City Lights event were Nerissa Dsilva and Nuvneet Khandelwal, first-year medical students. Brianna Stroup, Cate Wetzel and Ramona Mittal, first-year medical students, were chairs for the Light Up the Night event. Dsilva and Khandelwal said the students take pride in getting involved in a community event.

“It’s a privilege to contribute to this community by supporting deserving charities that provide services for the City of Lubbock,” Dsilva said. “This gala is a tradition for our medical students to remember the importance of giving back.”

More than $350,000 have been raised in the past 18 years through Lubbock City Lights. The Lubbock City Lights Charity Ball proceeds will benefit the following charities:

• The Free Clinic is a student-run initiative that offers medical services to the uninsured community of Lubbock, every Wednesday evening from 6 to 9 p.m. Each week, medical students and health care volunteers provide acute medical care, health education and social resource counseling.

• Family Promise is a nonprofit organization committed to helping low-income families achieve lasting independence. The problem of poverty is complex and will not yield to a simple solution or a quick fix. It requires an integrated approach that begins with meeting immediate needs but reaches much further to help people achieve independence and to alleviate the root causes of poverty.

• The Children’s Rainbow Program is held at Lubbock Impact on Wednesday evenings. The goal of the program is to introduce underprivileged children to a variety of healthy foods/nutrition and healthy living in a fun and interactive manner. In doing this, the program hopes that the children will learn to incorporate these foods into their daily diets and begin forming healthy lifelong habits.

• The Center for Super Heroes is developing critically needed services to reduce the long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences, particularly child abuse and neglect. The challenges faced by these children are significant and varied. This project creates an environment of collaboration and creativity to address previously insurmountable obstacles.

• The American Cancer Society provides free support services to cancer patients, health systems and corporations. Some of their patient service provides lodging, including Hope Lodge Lubbock; transportation assistance; support groups; wigs; resource and referral services; Personal Health Manager kits and cancer information free of charge to patients and their families.