OUR CHARITABLE PARTNER TO FIGHT CHILDHOOD CANCER
Every Year, around the time of St. Patrick's Day, individuals step-up and demonstrate their support of our cancer survivors by getting their head shaved. Join us in 2010!
The mission of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation is to raise awareness and funds to Conquer Kids’ Cancer by shaving heads sometime around St. Patrick's Day.
While coordinating hundreds of head-shaving events, we work to provide a fun and rewarding experience for all participants, with goals both ambitious and serious.The St. Baldrick’s Celebration was dreamt up in 2000 by John Bender and Enda McDonnell, two reinsurance executives from New York City. They had been challenged by a friend and colleague, Tim Kenny, to give back to society. For quite a while, these men and other friends, all of whom have Irish roots, had been observing St. Patrick’s Day in the traditional way---pints at their favorite pub, with music and laughter in great supply.
They decided to give their celebration a little twist and help children diagnosed with cancer. Because the treatment given these youngsters often causes their hair to fall out, the group recruited volunteers to have their heads shaved in public in return for pledges of financial support from friends and family to support their sacrifice. The event became the St. Baldrick’s Celebration, and is typically held on or near St. Patrick’s Day.
What began with a goal of “17,000 dollars on the 17th of March,” raised over fifteen million dollars since 2000 for the CureSearch.org foundation!
Cancer is the # 1 disease killer of children.
Forty-six children, or two classrooms of students, are diagnosed every day. Over the last twenty-five years, the incidence of childhood cancer has increased every year. Forty years ago, childhood cancer was almost always fatal. Today, through the advancements in diagnosis and treatment, 77 percent of the children with cancer can now be cured. Despite this remarkable progress in research and treatment, cancer remains the leading cause of death by disease in children.
About Children's Oncology Group
Mission:
To eliminate the personal, family and societal burden of cancer in children and adolescents by:
- Preventing and curing childhood and adolescent cancer through scientific discovery and compassionate care.
- Performing clinical and research trials.
- Conducting laboratory research.
- Identifying the causes of childhood cancer.
The St. Baldrick's Foundation puts your donations to work!
St. Baldrick’s Foundation (SBF) shavees may spend a great deal of energy airbrushing their before and after photos, telling people about their impending baldness, and working up courage for their rendezvous with the clippers. But in the end, everyone is interested in only one thing: curing childhood cancer! The majority of the SBF funds were dispersed to the Children’s Oncology Group (COG).
The COG is made up of more than 2,000 childhood cancer experts, working at 230 leading childhood cancer institutions in the U.S. and beyond. This cooperative research group has led the world in finding new treatments. Its members treat over 90% of all children with cancer in North America.
The Importance of Childhood Cancer
- One in every 330 Americans develops cancer before age 20.
- Each year in the U.S., approximately 12,500 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer. That’s the equivalent of two average size classrooms diagnosed each school day.
- Today, nearly 80 percent of children diagnosed with cancer become long-term survivors and the majority of them are considered cured. In the early 1950s, less than 10 percent of childhood cancer patients could be cured.
- Leukemias, tumors of the brain and nervous system, the lymphatic system, kidneys, bones and muscles are the most common childhood cancers.
- In the U.S., cancer remains responsible for more deaths from one year through adolescence than any other disease; more deaths than asthma, diabetes, cystic fibrosis and AIDS combined.
- Combined, the cancers of children, adolescents and young adults to age 20 are the sixth most common cancer in the U.S.
