Art Workshop for Cancer Survivors and Warriors

Ken Vrana is a cancer survivor and a professional artist. He is setting up a place where he can teach art to similarly afflicted folks as part of  healing process. I too am a cancer survivor and this resonated with me. He is setting up a low cost facility   with shipping containers. The current show stopper for this project  is setting up  staircase for these containers. He need to raise $3000 for this staircase project. Would sincerely appreciate if you could help him out.

Here is a link to Ken Vrana's organisation.  http://www.1in8.org/About%20Us.htm

Here is the text  version with the complete timeline , 

Please take time to go through it in its entirety.

The 1 in 8 Foundation was created over 20 years by Ken Vrana, while working for Sir Paul McCartney's breast cancer charity, the Garland Appeal. Paul's first wife  and lifelong love, Linda Eastman, died of breast cancer and Paul was determined  to devote himself to fighting this terrible disease.

Ken offered to help Paul raise funds and awareness for the Garland and over the next 15 years, produced scores of fundraisers. Many of them centered around the feature-length documentary film Ken had done, called "Snow Angels," which followed  3 women from North Carolina  who were stricken with the terrible disease. Unfortunately
all three of them would eventually pass away from the disease.

Ken requested and was given permission to use music for the film, first  from Sarah McLaughlin and then from Paul and Linda. Eventually Paul would remarry and his second wife requested that he redirected his energy to her personal charity, "Adopt A Minefield." She had lost a leg in a motorcycle accident and committed herself, to helping others who had suffered a similar fate stemming from unexploded mines worldwide.

It was at that point that Ken inherited The Garland and renamed it The 1  in 8. He also decided to place his primary focus, not on how to find a cure for breast cancer;  as there were already scores of organizations doing that, but specifically targeting  early detection. Many people are not aware that if they can find their cancer early they actually have a 86% chance of surviving The disease. The realities of this fact  would hit home in a big way a few years later when he, himself would be diagnosed  with cancer. Doctors subsequently told him that had he not discovered it - which  oddly was done through a routine medical visit - he could have easily died within a year.

Part of the problem is that men typically go in for regular medical checkups and if  and when they finally do, it is often too late. Within the next few years Ken would lose a sister to lung cancer, another to breast cancer, a father to brain cancer and a mother to leukemia. The second way that the 1 in 8 decided to become different was that no one involved in the charity would take a dime of salary. That meant that  Ken could give 100% of the money he raised to the cause, not 50%, 60% or 70%, which unknown to most of the general public is what most cancer charities donate.

At the time, Ken likes to joke, this seemed like a great idea but now, some twenty  years later, not so much, because projects like the art studio he's building had to be  fully funded out of his own pocket.

At about this time, more and more people were approaching Ken and saying, 'You  know I have skin cancer, or testicular cancer or uterine cancer or throat cancer and  no one ever talks about us' - 'It's always breast cancer this and breast cancer that. 

Accordingly, Ken redirected the 1 in 8 to focus on all kinds of cancers and not just breast cancer. He also approached the US Congress with a bill that would name the  month of May, into perpetuity, Early Detection Month. The bill passed with 100% approval.

A year or so later Ken suffered a stroke, which forced him to scale back his day-to-day event production but determined to keep the 1 in 8 strong and viable he decided to refocus is talents in another direction. First, he purchased 7 acres of land in Rural North Carolina, where his plans are to build a  permanent facility  that will be the Foundation's home. Second, using his skill and reputation as an  internationally recognized fine artist, he decided to build an art studio where people  with cancer and their families could come and take free art lessons.  He is also already talking to other well-known artists like Hami Sissoko and Mark Stinson about serving as visiting artists and sculptors.

After investing over $20,000 of his own money Ken is very close to completing the project and with your help his dream can become a reality. His stroke has slowed him down but he is determined not to stand in the way of this dream.