Every school year the annual NHS fundraiser, Coins for Cancer or this year Pennies for Patients, welcomes students and teachers to donate to cancer research. This event has before been called Coins for Cancer but has since changed to Pennies for Patients. 

NHS hosts a fundraiser that anyone and everyone can donate to. To kick this off, all advisories watched a short video explaining what the fundraiser is and the purpose of this. Accompanying this video as well is a clip of Mr. Stecina talking about his experience with cancer and how it has affected him. 

Traditionally Pennies for Patients has been all about the coin wars and beating all the other classes. Although this year Michael Warner who is the head of this initiative set out to change the way this works for this year and the coming years. Warner comments, “I have added many more opportunities for NHS to work with the community and give back to our biggest supporter, the town of Erie.” 

These opportunities such as a trash pickup day among other activities is a way for NHS to raise money and get donations from certain organizations. 

You might be asking yourself, where does the money go to and who is it helping?

Warner continues with saying that, “All the money goes to the Rocky Mountain Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.” 

Warner tells the stats of how these two cancers account for 40% of cases in children and adults. These patients who are fighting the cancer battle will receive all this money. 

While pretty much everyone knows that there is no true cure for cancer, there are ways to lessen it and get rid of the tumors. These methods of chemotherapy and radiation are not the only possibilities for treatment. These methods also do not guarantee that you will not relapse. Relapse happens very often and this is something that did in fact happen to Stecinas mom and many other cancer patients. This relapse can be fatal. 

Make sure to get your donations in at any NHS event you can as this initiative ends when Spring Break begins. Giving a hard deadline of March 20th! Push yourself to do all you can in order to help these patients. 

Warner also advises students to, “Focus on our letter advisory day on the 17th of March.” Warner tells, “this is an event where the student body would write letters to kids in the children’s hospital who are battling cancer.” 

Pennies for Patients is a wonderful fundraiser that helps many people battling cancer, specifically Leukemia and Lymphoma. Thank you NHS for hosting this and the Tiger Times hopes you are successful.