Caring for Cancer

Vital Stats

Carina C

Farmington, CT

  • people helped1800
  • People Doing It 6

The Problem

A two-time cancer survivor and visually impaired student myself, I know how it feels to have people staring at you and making comments behind your back. I also know what it means when strangers put together a huge box of gifts, doctors comfort you, and people call you to give and recive advice. The problem, is knowledge. The people making rude, undeserved comments have usually never experienced such things and have no reason not to see a person who needs assistance getting around or who spends weeks away while going to ht hospital as a stupid person. What must be done is to give kids in my situation the courage to stand up to those stare and remarks and to live beyond what is expected; to seem happy, content, and mindful of their situation while still remaining firm on their dreams for the futre.

Plan of Action

This project first started in the summer of 2003 when I, 11 years old at the time, read If I Get TO Five by Fred Epstein, an emotional and for me, hard-to-read novel explaining a neurosurgeon's encounters with some special kids before he had his own tragedy. This, combined with the fact that I have grown up in a community-centered family and have spent a lot of time in the kitchen with my mom; I recalled the hardships and kindness cancer (and the vision impairment that came with it), and knew something must be done. Shortly afterwords, we held a neighborhood tag sale and bake sale in which all proceeds form the bake sale and a few items from the tag sale went to buying toys for the hospital in Boston.That tag sale raised $400 and was all I raised that year; and that time as well as the next I was able to send everyhtingi n one box. The third summer, I began to expand, selling baked goods on a cart we put on the lawn every weekend for over a month in the summer. That year I raised $2500, and had to take the trip to Boston myself, especially since the year before, I had been featured in a local magazine that boosted my cause in my area. In 2006, I began riding along the beaches each weekend, as well as taking individual orders. For those next two years, I raised $4000, and the car was packed! While this year yielded on $2500, my culinary class pitched in gingerbread houses, and I am hoping for a summer that is more open and profitable, so that with some more word-of-mouth and college on the way, I can impact more children in even bigger ways. In fact, I hope that I can eventually start a foundation and help to make special rooms and hangouts for these cancer patients who come from all across the country and sometimes the world to receive this revolutionary treatment. Especially a I head off to pastry school, i dream to change another societal standard- that desert can't be healthy, allergen free and taste good and appealing to everyone. I hope that with a good, yet invigorating, fun experience, can help me open my own business so that I can continue to defy the odds and help yet more children take the next step to doing the same.
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Discrimination

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