Families Struggling with Pediatric Cancer to Receive Non-Medical Aid

The Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation (ASRL) has received a $300,000 grant from the Genentech Foundation to form the centerpiece of its newly launched Everyday Needs Assistance Program.

ASRL will use the funding to assist approximately 500 single parent families of children this year who face the dual tragedies of their child's diagnosis and severe finanical distress.

Families who experience the crisis of their child's critical illness often meet with insurmountable expenses. While the child is struggling for survival, their parents must contend with the demands of daily life. They must attend to their sick child, keep their jobs and medical insurance, make mortage or rent payments, fill the car with gas, the refrigerator with food and their children with hope. The Everyday Needs Assistance Program addresses these urgent needs.

ASRL will work through its national network of 12 pediatric hospitals provide Everyday Needs Assistance to soften the overwhelming burdens of families whose children are cancer patients.

Valerie Sobel, Founder of the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation said, "On behalf of the desperate families we serve, we are enormously grateful to the Genentech Foundation that in this year of increased financial setbacks, instead of cutting our budget for assistance, we in fact are able to help many more families. "By caring for the caregiver, we care for the child."

The Genentech Foundation is a private charitable foundation. It was established in 2002 by Genentech, a leading biotechnology company that discovers, develops, manufactures and commercializes biotherapeutics for significant unmet medical needs.

Read past article on Valerie Sobel's quest to help others and the start of the Andre Sobel Foundation in ABILITY Magazine - Valerie Sobel

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