Hope for Faith: student battles cancer

Photo: Contributed

There is a little girl in Kelowna who attends Heritage Christian School. Her name is Faith and she is 12 years old. She started seventh grade in September, but on Oct. 19 everything changed when she was diagnosed with Stage 3 Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“It happened very fast,” says Barb Schmid, business manager at the school and a close friend of the family.

“She had only gone into the doctor a couple of weeks before that and the tumour started growing very rapidly and she’s already started her treatment.”

This treatment includes chemotherapy, some of which is done in Kelowna, but other treatments must be done at the BC Children’s Hospital in Vancouver. That’s when members of the school and the community decided to band together and help the family with expenses.

“We started up a trust fund and we’ve started preparations to do a benefit in January,” says Schmid.

“It will be on Jan. 18 and we will have a dinner, silent auction and live auction and we’ll be selling t-shirts and key chains. All of the proceeds are going into the trust fund for her to pay for any of the expenses incurred because the medication she’s on is extremely expensive.”

Faith is unable to attend classes and these funds will also be used to purchase educational things to keep her occupied at home and while she goes through the chemo treatments.

Other plans include an upcoming bottle drive that begins Jan. 14 and a trust fund set up at TD Canada Trust, which can be accessed through any branch in Canada.

For more info and to make a donation, visit the website ‘Hope for Faith’.