How Helping A Fellow Neighbor Turned Into Something Greater For the Community of Fredericksburg.
By Andrew Arenas
In 2009, Andie McConnell was living close to a family whose child had survived pediatric cancer. She saw the hardships they faced and how isolated they became. She sometimes went over to their house to check up on them and give them someone to talk to.
She heard about their changes in routine and finances. Keeping up with everyday life became all the more challenging. She provided and ear, but she always wished she could have done more. Watching them go through such difficult times compelled her to do something about it.
Two years later, she started the Fairy Godmother Project, a non-profit organization that supports families that are facing pediatric cancer.
To get the project underway she had to survey families and local hospitals in the Fredericksburg area. She sat with them and spent time learning about their struggles and what they needed.
“What struck me the most while surveying was that need and void that many of the families expressed to me,” McConnell explains. She found that many families felt isolated from their friends when they turned to them for help.
Because she had worked in fundraising, she started getting collecting money through social media.
So far, her project has had some major successes. This calendar year the Fairy Godmother Project has been able to provide 36 different families that are currently facing pediatric cancer. The organization has also raised $50,000 just in grocery and gas gift cards alone.
One of the main services her organization offers is to ease the burdens on families by making meals, providing professional house cleaning and giving haircuts and lawn care. She also developed a fun to help them pay bills.
She worked very closely with a cancer parental advisory board to figure out the best possible way to memorialize a child. Offering financial assistance to cover funeral and headstone costs does in fact cost a lot of money.
A newly implemented program called ‘Stargazers’ was meant as a supplement to what is offered at a typical hospice. It includes planning celebration of life, funeral, and most importantly support after the child passes away.
McConnell and her daughter Eve recently started a program called ‘adopt a family’ which is geared towards young children. “It’s good for the kids to understand especially during the holidays to be comfortable helping others” McConnell says. The children are able to help the families by helping with cleaning and make cards for them. She finds it as a good way to learn life lessons such as leadership roles and what to say when someone is terminally ill. “The experience can be scary and tough, but I learned so much from my mom and wanted to do more to help” Eve said.
Some might question exposing a young children to pediatric cancer and the heartbreak it brings along with it. Eve gets to interact with those terminally ill children the same way as any other child. Grade school children can get confused to a child that’s bald or are afraid to interact with them. “Yes, it can be a tough pill to swallow for these kids, but I believe that sheltering children from this disease won’t help them in the long run” McConnell says.
Her ultimate goal with this program is to further remove that barrier where children can cope with the idea that cancer can occur at a young age.
The last program McConnell discussed is providing photo sessions donated by professional photographers in Fredericksburg. “Talking with many of the families, we’ve come to realize what an amazing gift photography can be” McConnell states. The photographers job is to capture cherished family moments, their love, and connections for each other despite the stresses of dealing with pediatric cancer.
“Like most diseases, people don't give pediatric cancer much thought until it impacts someone they know or love, but the reality is they should.” She believes that few people know first-hand the harsh reality of the long-term physical side effects of treating the disease, which includes learning problems, developmental delays, heart problems, infertility, developing a second type of cancer and many more. Her organization also spotlights the true emotional impact the families face over the years.
Reflecting on the five years of running a non-profit organization, McConnell stresses that the organizations values and mission haven’t changed one bit. “In the beginning we were really winging it, but now we are able to make smart business decisions that are viable to this organization” McConnell says. She gives a lot of credit to a “strong and capable” board who support and respects her and the mission to help as many families as humanly possible.