Our last big update was in February, we have a lot of new subscribers since then. There was a ton going in February, and even more going on now, 4 months later. Our mission is to provide peer support for caregivers facing advanced pediatric cancer and we are seeing our awareness efforts really starting to make an impact. The number of families we are currently helping has doubled since April, and the number of inquiries about potential caregivers has skyrocketed as well.
Now, of course, this means that there are still lots of caregivers and families that can benefit from Zach’s Bridge, which we certainly don’t want. But as long as that scenario exists, we are here to help.
We appreciate your willingness to join us on this journey and wanted to share our progress and updates from the past few months. Please reach out if we can help anyone you know or if you have any questions or feedback.
Where We’ve Been
We had the honor of participating in the American Psychosocial Oncological Society (APOS) conference in March, as well as at the Association of Pediatric Oncological Social Workers (APOSW) in April.
At APOSW, we were selected to share our learnings and insights on the need for peer support for caregivers and families facing an advanced diagnosis, and had to move into a bigger room to present. You can see those attendees lighting up with their support of Zach’s Bridge.
We also had the opportunity to help with a course on philanthropy at Salem State University here in Massachusetts, and served as guest lecturers, in what was called the best guest lecture of the year.
Jon once again was invited to present Zach’s Rules for Life at a conference in Nashville, which was, like previous presentations, called the “most impactful session of the conference.”
If you are looking for a speaker for a team meeting, event or conference, walk away reminders and lessons about what truly matters in life, while also learning about Zach’s story and Rules for Life, please let us know.
We also successfully completed our 3rd annual Zach Wall Blood Drive at Lovelane in Lincoln, MA in April. And with Jenn in the lead, we are helping increase knowledge sharing and collaboration amongst mostly smaller childhood cancer organizations and advocates that focus on grief and bereavement as part of CAC2 (Coalition Against Childhood Cancer).
Research
Our research about the value that Zach’s Bridge provides, is now being validated by the new families we are helping.
We are happy to share more details about that with you, and if you want to view the highlights, you can download the infographic.
Zach’s Bridge Team Updates and What’s Coming Up
In addition to her role as the executive director of Zach’s Bridge, Jenn has taken on the role of pediatric bereavement coordinator at Notre Dame Healthcare, as well as now serves as a peer research navigator at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Jon is now helping lead a new peer support oriented, periodic, virtual gathering of cancer dads, Dadcology, which was started by Momcology.org.
We are very excited to welcome our new social media coordinator, Hannah Kuczarski, to the team as well, so look for some good updates and improvements on Instagram and Facebook.
We have a lot of amazing things coming up too. That includes more speaking to teams and at events, more industry conferences, our initial fundraising campaigns, collaborations with other childhood cancer organizations and at least one more surprise, but we’ll save that news for the next time.