What's Happening?

The last few days were busy ones behind the scenes at FGP. Here is what is going on in addition to the cleanings, meals and lawn care:

1. Date night at the amazing Foode  for one of the couples in our FGP community! The couple was able to get out and have a night on the town to reconnect. When asked how it was, the mom said, "Amazing. Thank you for everything. I'm definitely going to be a regular."
2. One of the mamas got  her hair done by our helpful and talented stylist, Alis who works at Bangz.
3. The amazing and generous, Diana Keller of Sage Letterpress spent the weekend working on business cards and is ready and eager to work on some marketing materials for us! 
4. Design is underway of our first ever e-newsletter thanks to Stephanie's oldest!
5. Content for the newsletter is being developed.
6.We are running a contest on FB and here to name our e-newsletter. Whoever comes up with the winning name will get a $10  restaurant.com gift card.  If you aren't on FB, feel free to post your idea here for consideration under comments.
7. Two fundraisers are on right now for FGP! One is a Thirty-One Fundraiser (you know those great bags with cool patterns) and a Nomades Charm Fundraiser(the charms designed for the military families)!
8. A very exciting fundraiser is planned for the month of February! We can't tell just yet what it is because we don't want to ruin the surprise, but if you are a reader, you will love it!
9. Our check for $4,000 made its way to the family from our fundraiser in December.
10. Parent support meetings are being scheduled in our area. Thanks to Amy of Amy's Cafe  for her offer of her restaurant. 
11. Laura, the woman who is heading up the Richmond chapter is representing FGP today at a meeting with Childhood Cancer Community Consortium. 

Thanks to everyone involved in making any and all of the above happen! 

Want to volunteer? Send an email to info@fairygodmotherproject.org

 

Many things are happening at Fairy Godmother Project:
1. We are now a program of Journey 4 A Cure
2. We are establishing relationships with businesses to help service more families who have children going through pediatric cancer treatment.
3. We are in the planning phases of a Northern Virginia/DC area volunteer training.
4. We continue to cook, clean and give gift certificates to families.
5. We have photo sessions in all different phases (completed, planned, and editing)

Things are moving along and, as a result, our need for volunteers and donors continues to grow.
There are numerous ways for people to get involved.

1. Donate! We can always use money to purchase gift cards, care packages, offset the cost of meals, and other services. Donations are now tax deductible. Please send donations to:
Journey 4 A Cure, Inc.
43300-116 Southern Walk Plaza #649
Broadlands, VA 20148

Please put FGP in the memo line.
1. We need meal makers for the families we service. If you don't have time to cook, soon we will have a donation opportunity with some of our business partners. Essentially, you will be able to buy a meal for a family!! Will have details soon!
2. We need people who can commit to cleaning once a month.
3. We need businesses to be either sponsors (give money!!) or to provide services. Specifically we need:
a. Landscapers/ Lawn service business
b. Hair Stylists
c. House Cleaning Businesses
d. Grocery Stores
e. Farms (we would LOVE a CSA to share with families)
f. Other (can you think of anything that might help these families??)
4. Help getting a program off the ground that focuses on the siblings of the children with pediatric cancer.

Let us know if you can help in any way!!
If you are a family in treatment for pediatric cancer, please click here to request our services (presently we are only providing services between Richmond and DC). And if you have extra time, click here and share with us about your experiences in order to help make our program better!

Have a great day!!

Your child has cancer

The parents of 46 children per day have to hear those words. 46 (FORTY SIX) families PER DAY will have their entire worlds turned upside-down, will say goodbye to their "normal" lives and enter the world of pediatric cancer. The parents of those 46 kids each day will never sleep the same again, will never look at the world through the same eyes again. I don't want to scare you, but you could be one of those parents. I could too.

Did you know that Pediatric Cancer is the #1 disease related killer of our children?? And did you know that 1 in 330 children will be diagnosed with cancer before their 20^th birthday and 1 in 5 of those children will not survive. It would be naive of us to think it can't be us. It's easy to turn the other way when we are faced with stats like this, I mean really... what can WE do that would make a difference anyway?? Maybe if we don't look at it, don't acknowledge it, it will go away or it wont bother us, it works for an ostrich right? I've seen people get antsy when I talk about kids I know with cancer and I get that, I really do, it HURTS to hear and to think about... BUT it's NOT going to go away if we ignore it. You could be ignoring it right up to the moment you hear those words above. But instead, why don't we do something NOW?

Every 4 hours a child dies from cancer. Wow. That makes me teary every time I read it. And angry. Did you know that only 1 drug has been approved by the FDA in the last 30 years to fight pediatric cancer. In comparison to the 50 medications approved for adult cancers in the same time span. Pediatric cancer research will continue to be underfunded unless enough people care enough to help change that.

Today and for the next two months, you can take a step to help. Here's the rundown: Journey 4 A Cure is trying to win this money that Vivint is giving away to charities. That money is needed to help fund/advance childhood cancer research, which is needed BAD. J4AC will donate 100 percent of funds won from Vivint to cutting-edge research- to find more successful, less harmful cancer treatments and ultimately, a cure for childhood cancer.

All you have to do is click on the box below, "like" Vivint's Facebook page (don't worry, liking their page wont lead to harassment, it's just a way for them to track/authenticate votes), then you click the button to login to Facebook, then when the page refreshes, scroll down and click on "Vote". From then on, you only have to do the last 2 things. I timed it today, it took me about 15 SECONDS to do this.

Lastly, could you ask YOUR friends to do this? If we all do that, we can cover the 10,000 or so votes that we need to squeeze J4AC into 1st place. I'm competitive by nature so this challenge just fires me up! You can post the link on your facebook (over and over preferrably), email it, blog it, whatever works for you.

Let's work together to help make sure that less and less parents who hear the words "Your child has cancer" will hear "and there is no hope".

If you click below you can vote for an organization called Journey 4 A Cure to win $250,000. They are an amazing organization working hard to raise money for pediatric cancer. Please consider voting. It only takes a few seconds!!