Cookies For Kids' Cancer is a nationwide organization that helps families who don't have the money to provide treatments and medical help for their children with cancer. It was started by Gretchen and Larry Witt. They were inspired to start the program when they found of their 2 year old son Liam was diagnosed with Neuroblastoma, which is a deadly type of pediatric cancer that only about 30% of children survive. The family felt the survival rate is so low because the government and pharmaceutical industry spend such a low amount of money on researching it. Pediatric cancer is the leading cause of death out of all diseases for children 18 and under yet there is hardly any support to find new treatments for it. So when Gretchen and Larry Witt found out about this, they decided to try and raise some money to go towards finding cures towards the disease not only to save their child, but all other children with the same disease. Gretchen decided to have a bake sale with a goal of selling 96,000 cookies. Thanks to the help from many friends and volunteers, they sold all 96,000 cookies in only 3 weeks. They raised $400,000 dollars just from that one sale. 

 

8th Grader Monal Patel and 7th Graders Sydnie Whiteker, Savannah VanBrunt, and Austin Miller all helped out a lot. Mrs. Williams said they were there the most out of all of the students she remembered. When asked why she was so interested and why she worked so hard for this, Sydnie Whiteker replied, "Well, I thought about all the kids that have cancer and how horrible it would be to live with it, especially if you couldn't pay for it. So I thought this was something that would make their lives a little easier."

 

Savannah VanBrunt had the same outlook as Sydnie Whiteker. She just wanted to help out as much as she could. "The more people that helped out, the more money we would make. Then we could help more families. Plus I just love to make cookies!"

 

These students, along with many other at CMS, are great kids with big hearts. They realize that sometimes bad things can happen to some people and they don't always have a way to provide for it so they are there to help out whenever they can. It would have been great to get just $150, but these students raised $524. Just knowing they took their own time to be a part of this shows that they really care about others. But knowing they raised almost $400 more than they were required to shows just how much these kids care. These kids went above and beyond.