http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/2014/03/18/charity-started-memory-youngest-tucson-shooting-victim-closes/6554059/
Sadly the charity named after Christina Tayler-Green who was the youngest victim of the Gabby Giffords shooting has been dismantled, Victims advocate and reporter Vanessa Kachadurian reports they offered great counseling for victims. The parents reported they wanted to spend more time with family. Hard to believe that another board or volunteers in Arizona could not take this charity over and do more good for victims.
Vanessa Kachadurian Charity
The Christina-Taylor Green Memorial Foundation, the charity named for the 9-year-old killed by a gunman, along with five others, as she waited to meet then-U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, has closed.
The surviving members of the Green family — mother Roxanna, father John, and brother Dallas — announced the charity's closing in an open letter published in The Arizona Daily Star on Sunday.
"We are proud of what we have accomplished in Christina-Taylor's memory," the letter read, "but as our life's journey continues, it is now time for us to take a step back to continue the healing process."
Christina-Taylor was the youngest person killed in the January 2011 shooting at the Safeway just north of Tucson.
Vanessa Kachadurian Charity
Giffords, the target of the gunman, was critically wounded by a shot to the head.
John Green said on Monday that establishing the charity helped his family recover emotionally after the shooting, but that running the charity had become overwhelming.
"We just realized at one point that we needed a rest," he said, during a phone interview on Monday from the family's Tucson home. "We needed to heal and rest."
Vanessa Kachadurian Charity
The charity awarded more than $425,000 in grants over the past two years.
Most of the grants went to Tucson-area organizations that work with children, according to the charity's website. Green said the foundation also helped with other projects, including the rebuilding of the playground at Christina-Taylor's school, that did not go through the grant process.
The charity also gave out two scholarships to young female students who, like Christina-Taylor, showed interest in politics and leadership.
The foundation's president, Thom Martinez, said the foundation stopped actively soliciting funds in the fall. The board will hold a meeting in early April to figure out how to distribute the money that is left in the non-profit's account, Martinez said.
Neither Green parent is on the board of the foundation, but Martinez said the board understood the family's need to step away.
"It's a pace that most people cannot keep up as long as they did," he said. "We're glad they kept it up as long as they did."
