Homer Glen Student Wins Essay Contest to Benefit Children with Cancer

Homer Glen student Austin Bielski (age 12) was selected as one of four winners of the Hadley Middle School PTO “Being Awesome in our Community” essay contest. Students had the opportunity to write an essay about a local charity. In Austin’s winning essay, Austin detailed the many ways the Treasure Chest Foundation helps kids fighting cancer and how he is carrying on his great-grandmother Dorothy Barron’s legacy who once knitted hats for the kids served by the Foundation.

Austin Bielski was just 8 years old when he decided to put on a Lemonade Stand to help raise money for the Treasure Chest Foundation. This popular event called Cups 4 Cancer has raised more than $10,500 for children and teens fighting cancer.

“The Treasure Chest Foundation is especially grateful to Austin and the Hadley Middle School PTO for this enormous donation of $500,” said Colleen Kisel, Founder and CEO of the Treasure Chest Foundation. “There are so many kids impacted by childhood cancer today. Just look at what one young boy can do.”

The POTCF is a unique organization whose services impact more than 15,300 young cancer patients in 64 cancer treatment centers in 21 states across the nation and in the District of Columbia. Nowhere else in the nation does such a program exist. Colleen Kisel founded the organization in 1996 after her then seven-year-old son Martin had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1993. Ms. Kisel discovered that giving her son a toy after each procedure provided a calming distraction from his pain, noting that when children are diagnosed with cancer their world soon becomes filled with doctors, nurses, chemotherapy drugs, surgeries and seemingly endless painful procedures. Martin celebrated his 29th anniversary of remission from the disease in March of this year.

If you would like further information about the Treasure Chest Foundation, please contact Colleen Kisel at 1-708-687-TOYS (8697) or visit the Foundation’s website at www.treasurechest.org.