#GivingTuesday: The Lilabean Foundation
By Rich House
This month (only 5 days in) I’m seeing a lot of Social Media sites trending with #GivingTuesday posts, advocating a donation and/or support for a given charity or organization. With May being brain cancer awareness month, I am advocating your support for the Lilabean Foundation. My family first learned of the Foundation through the Giroux family (Nicole Giroux, LBF Executive Director), whose daughter Lila is a classmate of my children and has been battling cancer since her diagnosis September 25, 2009. More recently I have seen the work of the Foundation through their support of the Hovis family (Kristy, Jerry, William and Sophie), who are members of my summer pool and Sophie, a successful swimmer for RMSC. In late April, after a very courageous 15 month battle, Kristy & Jerry’s 12 year old child, Jungmin “William” Hovis passed away peacefully at home. Throughout their journey, the Lilabean Foundation provided resources to the family to assist with the battle. Recently William and the Hovis family were honored by the Foundation for his courage, you can read the full story, here are a few excerpts:
“The foundation and Nicole have been amazing to our family,” remarks Kristy. “She’s given us so many references and shared her experience…she’s been really great!”
The Hovis family now understands how critical The Lilabean Foundation is for raising awareness. “Six months ago, we didn’t know pediatric brain tumors existed,” said Jerry. “Now, I realize how prevalent this disease is. Children just come down with it and no one knows how it occurs or where it comes from. It’s important to help raise awareness so we can subsequently fund more research, which is vital to saving more children.”
To learn more about William Hovis and his courageous battle, visit Walk Like Will
More about the Foundation:
We seek to bring public awareness to the severity of pediatric brain cancer and the funds so desperately needed to sponsor this critical research.
- More than 4,000 children each year are diagnosed with a brain tumor (that’s 11 children every day).
- Brain tumors are the leading cause of cancer-related death in children ages 10 and younger.
- Over the past 20 years, ONLY 2 NEW drugs have been developed to treat pediatric brain cancer.
- ONLY 4% of the National Cancer Institute’s budget supports pediatric cancer research and only 8% of that amount supports brain tumor research. That means for every $1, only one-third of one penny supports pediatric brain cancer research!
- ONLY 1% of the American Cancer Society’s public revenues support pediatric cancer research.
Select the graphic below for 11 things you can do this month to support the Foundation
If you are so inspired, you can skip right to the 11 for 11 donation:
