Helen Cunningham Handicapped Fund

The Helen Cunningham Handicapped Fund was established with a gift of $185,000 from The Society for the Handicapped of Marion County to honor longtime advocate Helen Cunningham. It supports Helen’s life-long mission of helping others who need it most by awarding grants to programs and organizations which assist persons with disabilities.

Cunningham was active with the Society for the Handicapped of Marion County, and its predecessor, Easter Seals, since its inception in 1948. Her husband, Robert, was the organization’s founder and himself a polio victim. Helen devoted herself especially to the society’s preschool program which was named The Helen Cunningham Helping Hands Preschool in her honor.

Each year, the Cunningham Fund makes a grant award to the Center Street Community Health Center to provide needed assistance for individual requests for health services by those with disabilities. The balance of its annual grants support and fund programs and organizations that promote the general welfare and recreation of persons with disabilities and those that provide assistance for disabled individuals and their families in Marion County. It is the intention of the fund to provide the needed support for such individuals to become “handicapable.”