Ottawa and Vancouver TELUS Community Boards Help Hospitalized Kids Stay Connected

(Toronto, ON) – Kids’ Health Links Foundation (KHLF) is excited to announce that we’ve received grant funding from the TELUS Ottawa and TELUS Vancouver Community Boards in the amounts of $12,500 and $15,000, respectively. Two-thirds of each grant will be donated to The Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) and BC Children’s Hospital in support of their UPOPOLIS programs. These funds will support the socialization and integration of UPOPOLIS Version 2.0 into therapeutic care and the daily practice of child life specialists, who care for children and youth during a very scary and challenging experience in their lives. This new version of the program, launched in 2014, has an updated user-interface, enhanced functionality and refreshed look and feel, making it even easier for hospitalized children and youth to connect with one another, with family and with friends. The balance of the funds will be used by Kids’ Health Links Foundation to provide support and develop best practices for UPOPOLIS in consultation with CHEO and BC Children’s Hospital.

“My heartfelt thanks go out to the TELUS Team for their powerful commitment to strengthen communities where they serve and for truly living the philosophy, ‘we give where we live’,” says Basile Papaevangelou, Chairman of Kids’ Health Links Foundation. “It is because of TELUS and TELUS Community Boards’ ongoing support of our Foundation and the work that we do that makes it possible for us to positively impact the lives of young hospital patients across the country.”

Founded and created by KHLF and powered by TELUS Health, www.UPOPOLIS.com is Canada’s only private, secure and trusted online social network designed just for kids and teens receiving medical care in hospitals and youth treatment centres. UPOPOLIS provides familiar features of social networking, such as personal profiles, micro-blogging, newsfeed, instant chat, and photo uploading while giving patients the opportunity to stay up to date with schoolwork, and navigate through child-friendly health and wellness information verified and approved by health care professionals. Since 2009, TELUS Community Boards across Canada have donated $205,000 to Kids’ Health Links Foundation in support of UPOPOLIS implementations in children’s hospitals and UPOPOLIS program development.

About TELUS

TELUS (TSX: T, NYSE: TU) is Canada’s fastest-growing national telecommunications company, with $11.8 billion of annual revenue and 13.5 million customer connections, including 8.0 million wireless subscribers, 3.2 million wireline network access lines, 1.45 million Internet subscribers and 888,000 TELUS TV customers. TELUS provides a wide range of communications products and services, including wireless, data, Internet protocol (IP), voice, television, entertainment and video, and is Canada’s largest healthcare IT provider.

In support of our philosophy to give where we live, TELUS, our team members and retirees have contributed more than $350 million to charitable and not-for-profit organizations and volunteered 5.4 million hours of service to local communities since 2000. Created in 2005 by Executive Chairman Darren Entwistle, TELUS’ 11 community boards across Canada have led the company’s support of grassroots charities and will have contributed $47 million in support of 3,700 local charities by the end of 2014, enriching the lives of more than two million Canadian children and youth. TELUS was honoured to be named the most outstanding philanthropic corporation globally for 2010 by the Association of Fundraising Professionals, becoming the first Canadian company to receive this prestigious international recognition.

For more information about TELUS, please visit telus.com.

About the Kids’ Health Links Foundation

The Kids’ Health Links Foundation was founded by Basile Papaevangelou and his daughter Christina to foster initiatives focused on alleviating the stress, isolation and loneliness for kids and teens undergoing medical care so that they might be better able to overcome traumatic medical experiences. These initiatives include: UPOPOLIS — targeting healthy connections for pediatric patients; UPEDIA — providing resources supporting child life specialists; and UMIND — connecting professionals dedicated to child and youth mental health.

We believe that positive emotional well-being can be fostered by maintaining family connections and encouraging active social participation. By providing technology that enables this well-being through UPOPOLIS, we hope to help children heal faster and better overcome traumatic medical experiences.

KHLF and TELUS Health first launched the UPOPOLIS Program in 2007 at McMaster Children’s Hospital in Hamilton and since then it has expanded to 13 additional hospitals and health organizations across Canada including: BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver; IWK Health Centre in Halifax; CHEO in Ottawa; The Hospital for Sick Children and Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital in Toronto; CHU Sainte-Justine University Hospital Centre; Montréal Lutherwood Youth Treatment Center in Waterloo; London Hospital for Sick Children in London; Emily’s House Pediatric Palliative Care Hospice in Toronto; Janeway Children’s Health and Rehabilitation Centre in St. John’s; Youth Treatment Centre in Paradise; and the Youth Addictions Treatment Centre in Grand Falls-Windsor.

For more information about the Kids’ Health Links Foundation please visit: www.kidshealthlinks.org.

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For more information, please contact:

April Ganong
Kids’ Health Links Foundation
905-817-1717
april@kidshealthlinks.org

Sarah Arden
TELUS Community Affairs – Ottawa
613-683-1710
sarah.arden@telus.com

Nicole MacLellan
TELUS Community Affairs – Vancouver
604-648-5862
nicole.maclellan@telus.com