KSDK - KSDK in The Community

KSDK in The Community

KSDK is active in several community-based and charitable projects:

• "A Place to Call Home" is a Emmy Award-winning weekly segment featured during the station's Tuesday 6 p.m. and Thursday and Saturday morning newscasts that features one child placed within the foster care system that is in need of adoption. Since August 2003, 50% of the children that have appeared on the segment have been adopted. A secondary program, "Little Wishes" allows viewers to are unable to adopt a foster child to add a little happiness to their life by purchasing a gift for him or her.
• "Friend to Friend" is a program that reminds viewers on the fifth of each month to perform a breast self-exam to detect breast cancer in its early, treatable stages. Viewers can also contact KSDK for an informational packet that includes reminders on performing a breast self-exam. The station is also a major partner sponsor for the St. Louis Race for the Cure that raises money for breast cancer research foundation Susan G. Komen for the Cure, and which overtook Denver as the largest Race for the Cure event in the country in 2006 with more than 64,000 participants, with more than $2.5 million raised with over 65,000 participants in 2007.
• Volunteer 5 is a weekly, week-long program that collects donations for a particular local charity or community organization. It operates as a telethon, with phone operators taking calls between 4 and 7 p.m. each weeknight from anyone wishing to donate time or a monetary payment. Volunteer 5 has provided more than $5 million annually in services and hundreds of thousands of volunteer hours to local non-profit organizations. The program began in 1993 to help those affected by the Great Flood of 1993, but has not been seen on KSDK since November 2005, though it still appears on KSDK's website.
• The MDA Show of Strength airs each Labor Day weekend on KSDK (having aired only in primetime on the Sunday before the holiday since 2011), benefitting the Muscular Dystrophy Association in order to find a cure for muscular dystrophy and other diseases affecting the nervous and muscular systems. Anchor Mike Bush serves as host of the telethon's local segments, whose donations benefit the St. Louis chapter of the MDA.