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2009-2010 State Charity

Your 2009 NJASC State Officers have selected the Family Reach Foundation as the 2009-2010 NJASC State Charity. This worthy cause is the latest in a long list of special organizations with whom the NJASC has worked over the past three decades as part of our annual State Charity program.

In the 2009-2010 school year, we encourage the student leaders of New Jersey to help us meet our State Charity Fundraising Goal, which your 2009 NJASC State Officers proudly announced during the Spring Awards Program at Six Flags Great Adventure...

 

The Family Reach Foundation

WEBSITE: www.familyreach.org

About Our Mission

Our mission is to provide financial relief and heartfelt support to families fighting pediatric cancers and other life-threatening diseases. While the majority of our efforts are dedicated to families fighting solid-tumor, pediatric-type cancers, we extend support to families with similar medical situations and urgent, unfulfilled needs. The focus of our current efforts is to raise funds to help eligible families pay for a variety of significant expenses that mount during the patient's treatment, including:

  • Everyday home bills that accumulate due to lost wages of parents (e.g., mortgage, utilities, insurance, etc.)
  • Transportation to care centers and lodging for family members
  • Child care
  • Palliative care
  • Other special patient needs (medical or non-medical)
Our goal is to help over 1,000 families in the next 3 to 5 years.

Premise of our Cause

The Foundation has provided care and support to families since its original efforts in 1981, with funds addressing a spectrum of needs. As our mission describes, Family Reach Foundation was created to provide financial relief and heartfelt support to families fighting pediatric cancers and other life threatening diseases...

A Menacing Storm: Each year, there are over a million new cases of cancer, 20,000 afflicting patients under the age of 30 and their families. The disease does not discriminate - it affects people of all backgrounds and financial means.

Facing the Tornado: The surprise and trauma of the disease can resemble the sudden devastation of a tornado: One moment, life is safe and normal, and the next it is has been turned upside down with no time to hide or recover.

Attending to Love Ones: Quickly, the only thing that matters to the family is bringing a loved-one back to good health and restoring calm to the family - make the pain go away, get rid of the cancer, return to normalcy, do whatever it takes.

The Ongoing Aftermath: At the same time, life continues to move - the world does not wait. The often-overlooked consequence of the cancer tornado is that thousands of families hit financial and emotional breaking points.

Staying Afloat: Many families struggle tirelessly to keep the calm, stay on top of difficult financial conditions, and help bring health back to their loved one fighting cancer. The drain can be catastrophic, and lasting.

Family Reach exists to help families get through this unimaginable storm.

History

Before Family Reach Foundation was incorporated in 2003, the organization operated as the "Colangelo/Morello-Wiatrak Cancer Fund." The Fund was founded as a joint effort in 1996 by the families of Christopher Colangelo and Kristine Morello-Wiatrak. Christopher lost his battle with neuroblastoma at the age of 11 in 1981, and Kristine died in 1995 at the age of 27 after a year of fighting Ewing's sarcoma, a pediatric-type cancer.

Shortly after Christopher's death, the Colangelo family began a relationship with Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York to help families with the financial and emotional burdens of dealing with pediatric cancers. Over the years, the Colangelo's offered special attention to families requiring palliative care, home health assistance and other needs in the final days of their children's lives.

Kristine and her husband Chris had a similar vision during Kristine's fight against Ewing's Sarcoma. They both were astounded by the plethora of secondary costs and burdens that mount during treatment - from transportation to cancer centers, to special nutrition needs, to day care. They witnessed how families struggled to keep up with the enormous, everyday challenges of helping their loved-ones' fight cancer, while managing the variety of financial pressures that mount during the treatment period. Kristine, before she died, agreed with her husband Chris that they should create a fund to help families cope with these financial pressures, and allow them to focus their emotions on the healing of loved ones.

In 1996, the families of Christopher and Kristine, already good friends, decided to meld their efforts together into one fund. After seven years of grass-roots efforts and successful fundraising to help families primarily at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Columbia, the founders launched Family Reach Foundation as a formal 501(c)(3) non-profit organization in 2003. Since that time, Family Reach Foundation has helped hundreds of families fighting cancers (and other life threatening diseases) to help pay for critical non-medical and medical expenses.

NJASC looks forward to working with Family Reach Foundation in 2009-2010 to help this worthy organization meet its goals.