7-Year-Old Madison Cancer Survivor Inspires Something Special Tonight

Something special will be happening at the Daniel Hand High School football game tonight.

Yes thousands of home fans will be present eager to root on their team, but the Madison Public School System will also be raising awareness for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

This is the letter Childhood Cancer Kids, a Madison nonprofit founded by local seven year old survivor Sierra, sent to Superintendent of Schools Thomas Scarice and Football Coach Craig Semple that got the initiative underway.

“Last year, Sierra came up with a dream: to see football players wear gold for Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September, wrote the organization’s director Kim Preveza.

“We have worked with Madison Youth Football and they are helping us increase awareness this month. We made cheer bows and gave stickers for the helmets.

We would love to have the high school football players and cheerleaders to do the same with cheer bows and stickers. We will provide all the supplies.

When we met Coaches Ciotti and Filippone and they also suggested a half-time intro of Sierra and her charity with the cheerleaders doing a collection in the stands on behalf of Childhood Cancer Awareness month on 9/12 or 9/19. We also have a banner, if you approve.

We meet with the The Board of Selectmen this morning and they just made a proclamation that September 12th is Childhood Cancer Awareness Day. This is also a National Day.

We could keep it simple and ask the announcer to say

• Today and for the rest of the month we honor Childhood Cancer Awareness month.

• Sierra, a Madison, childhood cancer survivor had a dream to see football players help increase awareness about childhood cancer during Childhood Cancer Month.

• The football players are wearing helmet stickers which represent the color gold for childhood cancer and have the number 15,780 which is the number of children diagnosed with cancer in 2014.

• Every year it increases.

• Playing with the sticker on their helmets, the football players represent the fight against childhood cancer and they dedicate their games in September to the 15,780 children diagnosed with cancer this year.

• The cheerleaders are wearing bows with the awareness ribbon on them. They remind us of the support these children and their families need. As Sierra and her sister remarked “They literally hold us up.” and they did when the girls gave them the bows!.

• Childhood Cancer Kids is a Madison nonprofit that works to raise awareness about childhood cancer, raise funds for programs that support children with cancer, and proved the service of yoga relaxation to children with cancer.”

Here is a copy of the sticker. We will be honored and very excited to have the high school football players and cheerleaders be a part of this awareness campaign too. That is a main objective. We appreciated the consideration to take up a collection. We are excited that our town will be the beginning of an awareness campaign we will expand to other towns next year. Someday soon, the NFL. And it all started here!”