Relentless for a Cure
Today, the Saint Ursula Academy sisterhood is one that encourages students to go beyond their comfort zones in pursuit of helping others and building up the Cincinnati community. What many do not realize is that there have been various motivators that lead SUA students in their service and ambitions.
As team leaders in SUA’s Leukemia and Lymphoma Society campaign, Maddie Lippert '25, Belle Grubert '23, Molly Eppstein '25, and Mia Napier '24 took in many representatives to help them in their goal of raising money for blood cancer patients.
As the largest non-profit funder for blood cancer research and support since 1949, LLS is a donation-based corporation in which any raised money provides aid for those suffering with various blood cancers. The LLS “mission has three pillars: Research, Patient Support, and Education and Advocacy.” Thus, representatives work to encompass all three pillars in their campaign by raising awareness through letters, emails, and social media, and asking for both time and monetary donations.
This 8-week campaign is a great way for SUA students to get involved in service as any money raised goes directly to support the fight to find a cure for Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s Disease, and Myeloma, as well as to improve the quality of life for the patients and their families as best as we can. While working with LLS, SUA students strove to “raise as much money as they possibly could and gain a better understanding of what someone affected by blood cancer truly goes through, as well as the long-lasting effects that they face in their lives.”
This year, the schools involved in the campaign for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society raised over 800,000 dollars in the span of 6 weeks in addition to “LLS investing over 1.5 billion dollars into blood cancer research, providing free education services for patients and their families.” Thus, the success that SUA had in this campaign has been a motivator for more students to join the cause and keep striving for a cancer free world.
An additional focal point for the campaign is each student’s “WHY.” Maddie Lippert shared that her “cousin is an AML (acute myeloid leukemia) cancer survivor that gave her the motivation to want to support him and any others who are still struggling with the disease or remission.” Maddie mentioned that because the LLS campaign was something she had truly never experienced, it put her out of her comfort zone and gave her a new perspective of life and those that suffer with blood cancer. Seeing these effects firsthand and being granted a direct look into the lives and hardships of cancer survivors truly makes one relentless for a cure. In our world today, it is the connections to something negative that motivates one to make a change and bring forth a positive influence on our community.
Similar to Maddie, most people at SUA have a connection to cancer. Whether it is knowing someone that suffers with the disease, or simply wanting to help out, the strive that SUA’s students have put into the LLS campaign has “created an impact on our world that no one can ever truly grasp.”
If you want to learn more or feel inclined to help in the strive to end blood cancer, please visit https://www.lls.org/.