Students from PS 119 drop off toys for patients

On Wednesday, May 28th, three National Honor Society members representing the students of PS/IS 119 in Glendale, NY, delivered hundreds of new stuffed toys to the pediatric patients at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park. The toys will be used to teach patients about recovery from their medical treatments and simply to cuddle.

The idea for the community service project was spawned by Craig Edelman, a teacher at the school. He said, “I am a big Pat LaFontaine fan. When I saw what he was doing (opening of a Lion’s Den Room) at Cohen Children’s, I thought, how can we get involved?” Edelman rallied his National Honor Society members to begin a letter-writing campaign to ask for donations of new stuffed toys. Over the course of several months, the group was successful in obtaining almost 200 new stuffed toys for the pediatric patients. Continue reading »

On Monday, May 19th, one of the most dynamic engineers in NASA made a rare appearance at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, New York. In cooperation with the Companions in Courage Foundation (www.CiC16.org), a mid-day student session was webcast to the pediatric patients at North Shore LIJ’s Cohen Children’s Medical Center.

Patients watch live broadcast from Cradle of Aviation Museum

Kobie Boykins, a dynamic young engineer at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, is on the front line of Mars exploration. Boykins designed the solar arrays that power the Mars exploration rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. Most recently, Boykins was responsible for the design of actuators on Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory, which safely landed on Mars on August 6, 2012. Continue reading »

LONG ISLAND, NY – (May 4, 2014) Almost 100 runners toed the Start Line at today’s Long Island Marathon in support of the Companions in Courage Foundation. The event helped raise thousands for the pediatric patients who benefit from the work of the CiC Foundation.

For the 10th straight year, Doreen and Bill Isenberg served as hosts for Team COURAGE under the ‘big top” set up near the Finish Line in Eisenhower Park. They filled the tent with bagels, juice and power bars to ensure that all of the runners had plenty of energy to complete their run. Continue reading »

Posted: 05/20/2013 by Richard Tate

Last month, in a waiting room at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., a small boy sat with a laptop, engrossed in a game. His hair had fallen out, a side effect of his ongoing battle with cancer, and he wore a surgical mask to help protect his compromised immune system. The boy had a determined light in his eyes as he blasted a growing tower of cancer cells with chemotherapy bombs on the screen in front of him. 

The game he played is Re-Mission 2: Nanobot’s Revenge, one of a new collection of free online games for young cancer patients. Each of the games in Re-Mission 2 puts players inside the body to fight cancer with weapons like chemotherapy and antibiotics. From a corner of the waiting room, the boy’s grandmother looked on, smiling at her grandson’s apparent delight. As I chatted with her, I explained that the game, created by HopeLab, where I work, was made to be more than just fun. It was made to help her grandson fight his disease.  Continue reading »