Bricklayer Knits: What I do

Part of my job is running my high school community service group called Helping Hands. I took over this group this past fall and decided that we needed a focus for the year. That focus is helping people with cancer, and helping kids with cancer when we can. Most of my group is juniors, and junior year has become the most important year academically for kids now, because those are the grades that colleges really look at for admissions. My kids put in so much of their time to be part of Helping Hands, they really go above and beyond what I had expected! This year we ran a book drive for Dana Farber Cancer Institute, participated in town fundraisers, and our biggest fundraiser was a BowlAThon we hosted to raise money for a 12 year old girl in town who had her leg amputated in January after a failed attempt at limb salvage... she was diagnosed with osteosarcoma three years ago. We raised $9000 for her family to put toward a prosthetic that would allow her to play softball again!

This past weekend we participated in Relay for Life, the American Cancer Society's biggest fundraiser. Its an overnight event usually held at a college or high school track where someone from your team has to be on the track at all times. There are raffles (I won a Yankee Candle basket!), music, games, etc. It is FUN and I encourage everyone to do it at least once! I am proud to say that although I set our goal low for this event, the kids tripled what we expected to raise for the ACS, and we still have more money coming in. We were there from 2pm on Saturday to 8am on Sunday (I got a whopping 45 mins of sleep) and they were respectful and wonderful the whole time. I couldn't be happier!