Read this amazing story that has triumphed in spite of sadness. With that, I share this link in my hope to inspire others. Click on the link to read the entire story or read an excerpt below:
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The Hatlens, in their grief, asked themselves what could be done to address that medical void. In answer to that, in the year after Hannah’s death they established their own registered charity, the Hannah’s Heroes Foundation. It was designed to raise public awareness of pediatric brain cancer and to raise money for its research.
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It was a mom-and-pop operation. The board was composed mainly of family. There were no paid employees: All work on it was volunteer. In a world where large charities were burdening themselves with expensive bureaucracies, its aim was consciously lean and modest. Every single dollar raised would go toward its intended goals. None would go toward administration costs.
The fundraising was grassroots. An annual dinner, a golf tournament and a 10-K race over the back roads of Point Roberts all brought in money. And a mainstay of the charity was the annual sale of Hannah’s Heroes Christmas cards.
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“We had lunch at Van Dusen Gardens,” Dunn said. “She had just lost her daughter to a particularly nasty type of brain tumour, and she wanted to know how the money the foundation had raised could best be spent. I told her that in terms of research equipment, the $35,000 she had wouldn’t go very far. I told her it would be better spent on establishing a fellowship for training a research student, because that’s where the future was. It would be like dropping a pebble in a pond: the funding of one talented student researcher who could improve the science would have an impact that would radiate outward for a greater effect.”
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That belief led to the recent green-lighting of a cross-country project to test PLK inhibitors on a broad range of childhood cancers: BC Children’s will concentrate tests on pediatric brain cancers; the University of Calgary will look at the potential of PLK inhibitors in treating childhood leukemia; and the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto will test the effectiveness of PLK inhibitors against childhood neuroblastomas and sarcomas. The rings from the pebble dropped in the pond were growing farther and farther afield.
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