Tag: volunteer

‘Tis the season of joy and giving

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

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

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

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

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

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 !

Our Summer 2017 Fundraiser

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

Update: Thanks to everyone’s generous contributions, we managed to raise over $9K this summer (around $15k after gift match) to benefit to St Jude Children’s Research Hospital. THANK YOU for coming together as a community to help support the good cause!

You don’t have to be rich or famous to help. You don’t even have to be a grown up. You just need a kind and determined heart. At least, that’s what two six year olds taught us last year… Around Thanksgiving 2016, when our kid was struggling with her intense cancer treatment, she and her friend came up with an idea of a funding campaign to help kids that are sick. They wanted to have a lemonade stand (we hadn’t heard of Alex’s Lemonade stand then).

I must confess our initial reaction was one of skepticism — after all, what could a six year old kid do to help beat such a dreadful disease? But the girls were so sincere in their idea of a funding campaign that we decided to play along.

Still, lemonade in winter? You’ve got to be kidding! We tried talking the girls into considering something a bit more sane. Their next idea was to sell artwork to raise funds to help kids that are sick. With a cold and rainy winter season, artwork sounded way more reasonable, so we agreed to help them with their plan (thinking they would forget soon).

Much to our surprise, in the following months of hospitalizations and chemotherapy, our kid generated piles of artwork (over 50!). It was our turn to do something to help. After some failed attempts at selling the artwork (the logistics of an art exhibition etc were too complex, especially since she was still in intense frontline treatment), we thought why not convert her artwork into a storybook? We self published a fun and adventure book for children, and created an online fundraiser to help the kids with their efforts (the least we could do!).

Now, we ‘ld like to invite you and your friends to join these six year olds in their efforts to help other kids fighting cancer. Click below to donate now. For tax deduction and employee gift match, please donate directly at http://stjude.org/donate and send the email receipt to bravekidsfightcancer(at)gmail(dot)com. We will consider it as a donation towards the above cause.

 

See Apu’s CampaignPowered by Fundly

Volunteering and Donations

Posted hopePosted in Volunteer & Donate

Here are some facts about childhood cancer. Want to make a difference? There are many ways to help. You could volunteer at one of the cancer hospitals, or for the several non-profit organizations that are committed to helping end cancer. Below are a few examples in the Bay area.

Please do consider making a donation to any of these organizations or others of your choice. Your donations are tax deductible!

  • Donate to St. Jude Children’s Research hospital. Families never receive a bill for treatment, travel, housing or food.
  • Donate to Leukemia, Lymphoma Society. LLS is the largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding research, finding cures and ensuring access to treatments for blood cancer patients.
  • Donate to Camp Okizu and help them support all members of families affected by childhood cancer to heal through peer support, respite, mentoring, and recreational programs.
  • Donate to Kids & Art foundation and help them improve the well-being of children by healing through arts. They offer weekly art workshops at children’s hospitals in the Bay area and monthly workshops at various destinations.
  • Donate to Jacob’s Heart and help them support underprivileged families with grocery deliveries, transportation to hospital/clinic, basic financial assistance etc.