Jimmy Fund Summer Festival 2016!

Hannah
Jul 24, 2016
2 min read

This week, we had an other amazing opportunity to volunteer at the 2016 Jimmy Fund Summer Festival!

Jason (right) had attended this event in the past years after being a patient at Children's Hospital when diagnosed with neuroblastoma. With a few emails and a personal experience, we were all set to come in on this beautiful Saturday and volunteer with so many others.

Being an invite-only event, patients and survivors are able to attend the Jimmy Fund Summer Festival that is held at the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham. There were three pools, amusement park rides, lawn games, food trucks, bounce houses, music, dancing, dancing, Disney Princesses and Marvel Superhero's, a petting zoo, arts and crafts, and so, so, so much more!

From 11 to 1, we spent our time working the kite-making station with owner Archie E. Stewart (http://kiteeducation.com/). Children had the choice to either decorate a kite and we were able to put the kites together for them. We had the children help us out which they seemed to really like a lot. At one point while we were here at the station, we met a fellow DECA graduate Pete Bilzerian (with the help of our bright blue DECA shirts!). We mentioned our project and he told us how he is a neuroblastoma survivor. We only had little time to talk but he offered to help us out anyway he could.

After a few hours of making kites, we were kite-making experts!

Young girl helping us out with the kites!

After a quick lunch break, we head over to the Superman Pin-Making Station from 1:30-4 (the end of our shift). Here, we had children either color in a superman logo or make their own design and create their own pin to wear! This was a hit for many and we made over a hundred pins without a doubt.

Coming to the end of our shift, a family came over to design some pins. I noticed the women made a pin with a yellow and purple ribbon, so being strong advocates for neuroblastoma, I politely asked if the young girl had neuroblastoma. When the women said yes, we told them about our project. We got to talking and they explained to us they found out their niece had neuroblastoma when she swallowed a penny! A penny! That basically means if the young girl did not swallow a penny and get an X-ray done, they would have not known she had a tumor growing inside her (they saw a dark shadow near her abdomen). That really supports our mission with neuroblastoma and how unnoticed it can be. Doctors were able to remove the tumor and the young girl was 2 years free of neuroblastoma.

Overall, we had a very eventful day volunteering. From making kids smile and meeting two survivors of neuroblastoma, we would not change the day at all. Below is an email written the day after the festival from Lisa Scherber, Director of Patient and Family Programs at the Jimmy Fund Clinic.