Cupertino FBLA Leads Sedgwick Buddy Program with Cancer Patients

Cupertino High School FBLA’s (Future Business Leaders of America) Community Service Project recently started a buddy program at Sedgwick Elementary School, where 3rd graders created handmade and heartfelt crafts over the course of 4 weeks to be delivered to Bay Area Cancer Connections (BACC), a cancer resource center located in Palo Alto.

The Community Service Project, named Project CARE, is led by project chairs Alexandria Hunt and Sanya Jain and aims to positively impact the lives of those affected by cancer and raise cancer awareness in the local community. This year, project CARE is partnering with BACC in order to directly make a positive impact on the lives of cancer patients. Project CARE has four components- C represents changing and positively impacting the lives of cancer patients by implementing Zumba classes and a buddy program at Sedgwick elementary school and A represents advancing BACC’s environment and resources by creating inspirational posters and mementos to be hung up and distributed at BACC. R represents raising cancer awareness through creating a cancer awareness video and having guest speakers at Cupertino High School, and E represents empowering cancer patients through creating a “words of wisdom” book to be distributed at cancer centers and hospitals.

One of the main components of Project CARE is to positively impact cancer patients’ lives by creating a buddy program between 3rd graders and cancer patients. To do this, the project chairs reached out to 3rd grade teachers at Sedgwick Elementary School regarding starting a 4 week long program for students. The program began on January 24th and ran every Thursday for 30 minutes until February 14th.

On the first week of the program, 3rd graders were given a short presentation about what FBLA is, what buddy program is focused on, and the activity of the day. The week’s activity was writing letters to cancer patients, and to do this, the students wrote thoughtful letters including an introduction about themselves, kind messages, and hand-drawn illustrations with color. By collaborating with one another and asking the volunteers for help, students were able to write hand-written letters to send to the cancer patients.

During the second week of the program, the third graders created individual handprint cutouts and continued to work on their letters to the patients at BACC. First, they began by tracing their hand onto any colored paper they wanted. Afterwards, they wrote a kind message to the people at BACC on the handprint and cut it out. With the time left over, the students finished working on their letters by making final edits and proofreading their work.

On the third week, the volunteers introduced a new craft to the third graders. During this week, the third graders created heart cutouts and decorated them with motivational quote printouts that the project chairs found online. Additionally, the students added their own personal touch to these hearts by adding sequins and decorating using any other supplies. The hearts were all in teal or pink colors to symbolize breast and ovarian cancer awareness. This activity allowed the students to work together and create a nice memento for cancer patients at the same time.

During the last week, the students created paper packages to hold all their individual crafts and deliver to the cancer patients. The project chairs provided the students with a template to follow and the students followed the given instructions. To personalize the boxes, the students added their name and a heartfelt comment to make the overall gift more positive as a whole. Once the boxes were complete, the students attached their letters and put in their heart and handprint cutouts.

After the program occurred, all crafts and letters were delivered to cancer patients at Bay Area Cancer Connections, creating a positive impact on the lives of those affected by cancer.