Helping children fight cancer

Approximately 300,000 children are diagnosed with cancer each year. As you can imagine, this news is horrifying for families and in many cases, extremely difficult to deal with. This is where St. Jude’s steps in…

Hi, I'm Rafa Kahn. I am a 7th grader at Buzz Aldrin Middle School in New Jersey. For my Bar Mitzvah, I was tasked with making a difference in this world through charity, so I chose St Jude’s.

Why St. Jude’s?

St. Jude’s is a non-profit organization offering completely free care and medication for children with cancer and various catastrophic diseases across the globe. Since its founding in 1962, they have helped push the overall cancer survival rate from 20% all the way up to 80%. St Jude’s is completely unmatched and has the highest success rate in the world for aggressive childhood cancers and diseases. Additionally, St. Judes researchers have discovered 1,300 different cures and medicines for children’s cancer.

What fueled my desire to help out in this specific area? Last year during the pandemic, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I got to experience some of the struggles that families have had to endure firsthand.

Thanks to wonderful doctors and treatments, my mom is on the road to recovery. I understand what it feels like for all of that to be going on, and I want to make the holidays more magical and a little easier on these affected children and families.

I want to go out and do something, and I happen to have a passion for running and sports. I have been training for an 11k run on January 22, 2022. I am using an app called Charity Miles that donates money to a charity of your choice for every mile that you run. I believe being able to donate money whilst I am training is a great way for me to donate more to people in need. (Plus, I like the idea of gaining extra motivation when thinking of the people that I can help.)

By helping St. Judes, I hope that my fundraising will not only impact children now, but the immeasurable in the future.