Category: Volunteer & Donate

An evening of wishes

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Make a wish foundation grants life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. When a wish comes true, it creates strength, hope and transformation.

We had a great time at the evening of wishes gala! Our kid’s wish was to write a children’s book. Make a wish helped her work with a real children’s book author, Shirin Bridges. Kiddo also met and interviewed Annie Barrows, the famous author of Ivy and Bean children’s book series! She visited Chronicle books at San Francisco and learned about how a book gets published (from the initial submission, to design, editing, printing etc). At the gala, she was asked to read her upcoming book on stage. Apu was initially nervous, but was pleasantly surprised upon hearing the applause and support from the audience. She said it was one of the best feelings she ever had! Thank you so much Make a wish!! 💕🥰

Apu’s cartoon of her reading the book on stage, and with another wish kid, Finley who danced beautifully to Rachel Platten’s fight song.

Please reach out to the child life specialist or social worker at your hospital if you’d like to connect with Make a wish for your kid.

Student of the year grand finale, LLS

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It was an amazing night of celebration at the Student of the year (SOY) grand finale by Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS). About a dozen high school teams from the Bay area had been working very hard since Jan this year to fundraise for finding better cures for blood cancers, and…

these teenagers raised a whopping $246,000 towards the noble cause!!

We’d like to thank the SOY team for choosing Apu as the honored child hero for the event. As someone who’s shy, she was nervous to go up on stage. Thanks to the encouragement and support from the audience, she soon felt comfortable — even gave a short speech on stage — and was delighted to give the awards to the winning teams.

We met and spoke with many students and their families. So inspiring to see the energy and passion of these high school kids towards helping the community! Way to go kids!! 👏👏👍

Light the Night 2019

Posted hopePosted in Support network, Volunteer & Donate

Huge thanks to all our friends who joined us yesterday at Light the Night, and to everyone that contributed to the cause!

Apu was called on stage to raise the white lantern in support of all survivors and patients. As she raised her lantern, people raised thousands of colorful lanterns to light the night sky, for a celebration of hope and strength, bringing light to the darkness of cancer. It was heartwarming beyond words to see the love and support from such a large community of patients, survivors and supporters… One of those beautiful moments where nothing else mattered — no race, gender, age etc… What an elegant celebration of the strength of the human spirit!

Personally, we felt humbled and grateful that Apu is well enough to celebrate her first chemo-free birthday in 4 years in such a positive and meaningful atmosphere, as part of Light the Night. She and her friends had a blast! They dressed up in their Halloween costumes and had fun with various activities such as face painting, bouncy slides, and balloon animals.

And a huge shout out to all our supporters! Thanks to your generous donations, our team “Brave Kids Fight Cancer” ranked second and raised ~$25000 to help the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society find better cures to end cancer. You’re all awesome – thank you for the continued support, prayers and wishes!!

Happy 2019!

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

Goodbye 2018, and hello 2019! For us, this holiday season was a big relief as it marked the end of ~2.5 year long treatment/protocol for our kid’s high risk B-cell leukemia. She is recovering well, and we pray that she is permanently cured.

We feel grateful and blessed to have made it so far. Here’s a video to capture the positive memories and small joys and lessons along this journey.

Wishing everyone a happy 2019 filled with strength, joy and hope! Continuing to pray for all families.

‘Tis the season of joy and giving

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Two years ago, we were stuck in the hospital around the holidays. Every random act of kindness went a long way in helping our kid smile. So this holiday season, we decided to help cheer up kids at the oncology clinic and the pediatric unit at the hospital by giving back and distributing gifts. Just simple stuff — sing-along-toys and blankets for young ones; activity kits, games, art set and coloring books for older ones. Knock, knock joke books for all ages (beware nurses and doctors, you can’t enter unless you answer it right!). For silly time, there was emoji-mania — ornaments filled with emoji plush toy, emoji bracelet, emoji led rings, and an emoji stress ball.

We met kids of different age groups. The smile on their faces made our day! A strange, unexplainable joy filled our hearts — couldn’t have had a better way to celebrate Apu’s end of treatment!

Once again, many thanks to everyone that has helped us come so far in this journey. For all those still in treatment, stay strong and hang in there! Sending our best wishes and prayers for everyone to feel better soon.

Light the Night 2018

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Huge thanks to our friends and families for joining us at the Light the Night walk yesterday! As people walked and raised their lanterns to light the night sky, it was a lovely celebration of hope and the life of our young friends — Jazelle, Jack, Tyler, Drake, Theo, Paris, Gabriel, Vivien, Suvir, Tegbir, Arush, Apu and everyone else fighting cancer. Couldn’t have been a better way to celebrate Apu’s 8th birthday, in at atmosphere filled with hope, joy and strength!!

Our deepest, heartfelt thanks to neighborhood community and friends, who helped our team raise around $5000 for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to find better cures for all types of blood cancers. Thanks everyone for bringing us closer to a world without cancer!

Go Gold – Raising Childhood Cancer Awareness

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Huge thanks to all kids and families for participating in the Go Gold party yesterday to raise Childhood Cancer Awareness this September! It was our first time organizing such an event, and we couldn’t have done it without your help.

The theme was kids helping kids in need. It was fun watching kids unleash their creativity via various DIY art projects, such as decorating canvas caps, pouches, card making and bracelets. There was a stand with homemade lemonade and yummy cupcakes.

Kids were thrilled upon raising $1100 !! We had promised to match the amount, and with an additional corporate gift match, the impact was multi-fold. The sales benefited Kids & Art foundation, a cancer charity that aims at healing pediatric cancer through the arts. It’s their 10th anniversary this year, and they’ve been helping kids in treatment by organizing weekly art workshops at children’s hospitals (UCSF Benioff, Stanford’s Lucile Packard), and monthly workshops at different artist studios in Bay area, including a recent one at Disney Pixar. More here.

Once again, thanks to all the wonderful people that joined and made yesterday’s party fun and meaningful !

Happy 2018!

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As we look back at 2017, it’s a mixture of hard-to-describe feelings — from hospitalizations and frequent clinic visits in the first half of the year to transitioning back to school (after a year long break), and finding the new “normal” in our lives amidst the ongoing treatment… Things haven’t been easy, but we are immensely grateful for the positive trajectory…

We are filled with gratitude for everyone that helped us build positive memories from the difficult period. And we wish you all a very happy and healthy 2018, filled with hope, courage, love and joy!

Giving back this holiday season

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Last year, our kid was hospitalized during the holiday season. This year, we have been lucky to stay home. Couldn’t ask for a better holiday gift than being healthy and happy at home with family and friends! Happy holidays to you all too!!

As a token of our thanks, we packed and distributed gifts to kids at the hospital and clinic. For nurses, we gave the DIY lip balm, soap, and bracelets mentioned in this FB post. For kids, we packed DIY cards and ornaments along with a combination of storybook pillows, legos, activity books, fidget spinners, games, and glow sticks depending on the age group. Across all ages, the emoji plush toy was a hit — nearly every kid in the hospital picked a poop emoji!!! 😂 🤣

While the gifts were not expensive by any means, it was a deeply satisfying experience to give back and help in a tiny way this holiday season. Was heartwarming to see the kids smile… 💕

September – Childhood Cancer Awareness Month!

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Update from Oct 14, 2017: Thanks to the help from our awesome supporters, our team raised around $5000 for the Light the Night event! Huge shout out to each one of you for helping save lives!!!

September is the month of Childhood Cancer awareness. Most people are unaware of some of the shocking facts about childhood cancer (e.g., did you know that one in every 5 children do not make it? And that only 4% of federal government cancer research funding goes to children? See the post below for more facts).

We invite everyone to join us in bringing light to the darkness of cancer by donating towards our fundraising efforts in support of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s “Light The Night” walk.

Our life changed in an instant when our five year old daughter was diagnosed with B-cell Acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The following months were a nightmare with intensive chemotherapy, including a series of hospitalizations, numerous chemo shots, lumbar punctures and blood transfusions (you can read about it here). Her sixth birthday was in the above setting. Today, thanks to the help from doctors, friends and family, our kid is feeling better, just started going to school, and is gearing up for her seventh birthday. 🙂

To celebrate her birthday, and those of several other children that are fighting, or fought against cancer, we invite you to join our team in LLS’s annual fundraising event,  Light the Night Walk.

You can help in any way — by registering to walk  or by donating here.

Your participation in the Light The Night Walk will help save lives. Please act today!

Thank you for bringing us all closer to living in a world without cancers!