Youth Cover 500 Uber Rides, Dozens Of Meals for Cancer Patients

BEL AIR, MD – Harford County school-aged children have helped cover costs for 500 hospitalized children thanks to a fund started in 2016 by a 10-year-old girl. The goal this year is to help twice as many children through a September 8 fundraiser planned at the Harford Sports Performance Center in Forest Hill.

The We Cancerve Movement’s Pediatric Patient Assistance Fund at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore has amassed almost $12,000, with nearly half of the funds coming from last year’s Goals for Grace fundraiser, a soccer and softball fun day that afforded area youth ages 5-18 an opportunity to kick a soccer ball or bat a baseball or softball 10 times for $10.

Online registration for this year's Goals for Grace continues online through 11:59 p.m. through September 7th.

To date, the We Cancerve fund at Sinai helped provide 110 Uber rides to Sinai for chemotherapy and other treatments for parents and their critically-ill children. Those rides cost the fund more than $3,000 – a sizeable chunk of money We Cancerve’s team of volunteers and all-youth board of advisors hopes to triple in this year’s fundraiser.

“I am happy the money was there to support families since they do not have to worry about how they would get to the hospital. The families can concentrate on helping their kids to get the treatment needed to make them better,” said Hayden Gardner, 12, a student at St. Joseph’s Schoolin Cockeysville. Hayden and her younger sister Hayley are first-time We Cancerve volunteers. “In the past, parents may not have taken their child to treatment without access to transportation. This makes me heartbroken because these kids may not have received the proper amount of treatments which could cause them to be even sicker.”

A few dollars behind transportation costs is food costs for families of critically-ill children; such costs include hospital cafeteria vouchers and restaurant gift cards, which can help parents too exhausted to prepare home-cooked meals for the rest of the family after spending days and sometimes weeks in the hospital with a sick child, explained Grace Callwood, who founded We Cancerve in 2012 shortly after her cancer diagnosis at age seven. She started the fund in 2016 with a $5,000 donation from a $25,000 national prize she won for her peacemaking work.

Sinai’s Geannine Darby, Director of Major Gifts, explained the importance of the fund this way: “When a family has to cancel appointments because they can't get transportation, the money (We Cancerve) is raising is helping them to get to that appointment they couldn't get to otherwise. When a child is going through a lengthy appointment for infusion and the child and family are hungry but can't spend the money to get something to eat at the hospital, (We Cancerve) is making it possible for them to receive a meal. When a family is struggling because they need to purchase a medication they cannot afford that isn't covered well by their insurance, We Cancerve has helped them to avoid that difficult decision to say no to the medication they need by helping.”

Thanks to event sponsor Coach Danny Taylor, owner of Harford Sports Performance Center and other generous donors, all money raised from this event will go to the fund.

Registration for the event is now open at www.wecancerve.org. The event is being held during National Children’s Cancer Awareness Month at the Harford Sports Performance Center in Forest Hill, Md. The event recognizes Callwood's cancer journey. She was diagnosed in 2011 with Stage IVNon-Hodgkins Lymphomaat age 7 and declared cured at age 14 in February 2019 by her team of oncologists at Sinai. She is now a rising freshman in the Global Studies International Baccalaureate program at Edgewood High School.

A penalty kick is essentially a single shot on the goal while it is defended only by a goalkeeper, usually from an opposing team. At the shootout, top scorers in three categories – elementary, middle and high school – will move on to shoot three penalty kicks against a seasoned goalie. The event will conclude around noon with the top scorers from each group receiving a grand prize.

Phil Saunders, head coach at CCBC at Catonsville and the Director of Goalkeeping at Baltimore Union, is returning as the event’s celebrity goalie. Saunders, played professionally for two years in the Icelandic First Division for Bi/Bolungarvik in the 2014 and 2015 seasons, before returning home to play a season for the Baltimore Blast in the 2014/2015 season, currently trains goal keepers from most other youth clubs in Baltimore. Before his pro career, Saunders played for UMBC. Saunders is tied for 2nd most shutouts in program history, having made the All-Rookie Team in 2009, named team MVP in 2012, the All-America East Team in 2012 and 2013 named most outstanding player in the America East Tournament in 2012, and captained the 5th nationally ranked team in 2013.

Onsite registration begins at 8:45 a.m. at Harford Sports and will remain open until 10 a.m. No soccer, baseball or softball experience is required to participate.

Event goers can also participate in a silent auction. A free continental breakfast is offered on a first come, first serve basis and can be enjoyed on the observation deck, where all non-players will be encouraged to stay for the safety of all players.

Patients receiving help from this fund are seen at The Sinai Hospital Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology, which is based in the Herman & Walter Samuelson Children’s Hospitalat Sinai. The 26-bed Samuelson Children’s Hospital at Sinai is a state-of-the-art family-centered Children’s Hospital, which provides a broad spectrum of pediatric diagnostic, inpatient, post-surgical, intensive care, hematology and oncology, and outpatient services available to children, adolescents, and some young adults with pediatric diseases, from birth to age 26, including the vitally important accommodation for two parents to sleep in their child’s room. A large part of the Children’s Hospital is the newly renovated and constructed Pediatric Hematology and Oncology Outpatient Center, which began seeing patients in July 2010.

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