PEACE (Parents Educating Arkansas About Children With Epilepsy)

PEACE — Parents Educating Arkansas About Children With Epilepsy — is part of the great tradition of nonprofit organizations founded simply to fill a void in the social service system.
In 2006, Tina Alexander went hunting for a support group for parents like herself who were having to learn to care for a child with epilepsy and discovered that there were organizations for adults but nothing specifically for children in Arkansas.
With guidance from the national Epilepsy Foundation, Alexander created PEACE and quickly recruited Mandy Crow to help facilitate the project.
“We were just a support group at first, but we had so many people ask us to do other things that we became a nonprofit,” Alexander said.
In four and a half years, PEACE has planted regional support groups in northwest Arkansas and Saline County as well as Faulkner County. After recruiting a board of directors and incorporating as a nonprofit, PEACE also began to raise money to buy equipment for the families of children with epilepsy, including special pillows and a bed motion monitor to alert parents if a child suffers a seizure in the night. Clients are allowed to use the monitor for 30 days before deciding whether to buy one. PEACE works with the manufacturer to help families buy monitors and is working to raise money to buy monitors for families who can’t afford them.
PEACE also helps equip families with Medic Alert bracelets and has brought presentations to schools, day cares and churches around the state.
PEACE has no paid staff members, but it already serves about 1,000 Arkansans a year. The young nonprofit is partnering with Arkansas Children’s Hospital to host the “Stampin’ Out Stigma” walk at the Clinton Presidential Library on March 26.

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