LBBC Volunteer Awards: Together, Bringing Hope Home and LBBC Improve Quality of Life of Those With Cancer

Every year, Living Beyond Breast Cancer selects a small group of key volunteers – both individuals and organizations – and recognizes their volunteer efforts with an award. Our 2016 winners received a physical award as a token of our appreciation and will be featured in the Summer 2017 issue of our national newsletter, Insight. We’re also celebrating them here, on LBBC’s blog. We’ve asked a loved one, friend, colleague or employee of each awardee to write about that person or organization as they know them, and about where each awardee’s dedication to volunteerism comes from. 

The Community Vision Award is granted to an individual or organization that donated significant time or resources during the previous year to enhance the quality of life of people affected by breast cancer. In addition, the recipient acted as an advocate and worked to improve community awareness of LBBC and its services.

The 2016 Community Vision Award goes to Bringing Hope Home. Since 2008, this nonprofit organization has supported more than 4,000 families in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware who have been affected by cancer.

Living Beyond Breast Cancer partners with Bringing Hope Home to provide the Cis B. Golder Quality of Life Grant. Created in honor of a dedicated LBBC volunteer, this program provides small quality of life grants to people affected by breast cancer in the Greater Philadelphia region. The grant helps these families pay for expenses including rent, mortgage, utilities, transportation, groceries and child care.

“Bringing Hope Home’s ongoing partnership with the Cis B. Golder Quality of Life Grant over the years, including the fact that they match LBBC’s donation dollar for dollar, has made a significant difference to those impacted by a breast cancer diagnosis,” says Lynn Folkman, LBBC’s manager of community engagement.  “Bringing Hope Home truly helps LBBC advance our mission of connecting people affected by breast cancer to trusted information and a community of support.” 

Below, Susanna Monteleone talks about how the Golder Grant has made a difference in her life:

It was a long journey from the time we were diagnosed – I say “we” even though it was me who was diagnosed with breast cancer, because it affected all of us: my college-aged children and my 89-year-old mother. There was no family history, the cancer did not spread to the lymph nodes, but it was categorized as grade 3, which is a very aggressive cancer. It was devastating to hear the news, and going through chemotherapy and radiation left me weak and feeling powerless and helpless. I was so fortunate to have had a social worker at the doctor’s office who guided me to different resources to deal with my cancer.

I met a wonderful group of people at Bringing Hope Home who made me feel like family. I was not alone. They were NOT a resource – they were a lifeline and an anchor at a time that I felt like I was floating to an unknown place. They checked up on me often to make sure we were doing well and see if we needed anything. They came during the Christmas holiday with gifts, and not long after, I received a call from BHH stating I was receiving the Golder Grant to help pay some of my bills. The written word cannot express the love and caring I have felt with everyone I have come in contact with at Bringing Hope Home! Not only is Bringing Hope Home an organization that lives up to their tagline of “unexpected amazingness,” everyone who works there is my big brother and big sister.

The grant gave me relief from some of my bills, which came at a much-needed time due to all the medical bills and medications. After attending Bringing Hope Home’s Great Guys Dinner, I realized how many people they have helped – including many people who had a greater need than even my own family did. BHH has this unquantifiable energy and uplifting attitude to help everyone they can.

I want to thank my family at Bringing Hope Home from my heart and those involved with the Golder Grant for their extreme love of humanity and concern for each individual during a time where life has brought the human spirit low! #cancersucks #bringinghopehomerocks!