Until there’s a cure for cancer, patients and their families need support.
That’s the goal of Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services, which provides care and counseling for children with cancer and their families in the high-need rural areas of California. The service gives families, often at their most vulnerable moment, the financial, emotional and practical support they need.
This hands-on effort — and the premise of healing and hope behind it — earned Jacob’s Heart one of four $50,000 grants awarded by the NVIDIA Foundation to nonprofits providing cancer care and support services.
Other recipients include an art therapy workshop serving pediatric hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area, an eye center offering ocular services to an underserved population in India, and a program offering health care information and cancer screenings for at-risk women in India and Nepal.
The NVIDIA Foundation, our employee-led corporate giving arm, grants $200,000 each year to four groups around the world through its Compute the Cure Cancer Care grant program. This effort is part of the Foundation’s Compute the Cure initiative to advance the fight against cancer. Through grants and employee fundraising, Compute the Cure has directed more than $3 million to cancer-fighting causes.
Nearly 50 organizations submitted proposals this year to win a Compute the Cure Cancer Care grant. They were evaluated and narrowed to eight finalists by a group of more than three dozen NVIDIA employees. NVIDIANs worldwide then voted for their top choice, with three more selected by the NVIDIA Foundation board. Learn more about them below.
Jacob’s Heart Children’s Cancer Support Services
An NVIDIA grant will help provide counseling sessions, support groups, retreats and expressive arts to 450 children and 2,000 of their family members. Funds will also support an additional 100 parents of children living with cancer across the U.S. through a mentorship program.
Art therapy integrated into a regular treatment plan can help heal, encourage and create memorable experiences for children and their families facing the disease, but it’s not covered by insurance. Kids & Art offers free art workshops, run by volunteer professional artist, in the pediatric oncology waiting areas at two leading children’s hospitals in the San Francisco Bay Area. An NVIDIA grant will provide more than 200 weekly workshops over the next two years, serving up to 2,400 kids.
One of the few ocular oncology centers in India, LV Prasad served more than 900 patients last year. Of these, almost half were economically challenged, non-paying patients. NVIDIA’s grant will fund no-cost radiation therapy for more than 450 underprivileged patients in one year, and support the cost of an ocular prosthesis, for those patients who’ve lost an eye to cancer.
VT Seva
To improve early detection of cervical and breast cancers and increase awareness about women’s health among marginalized communities, VT Seva runs door-to-door canvassing and screening camps in remote, low-income communities across India and Nepal. NVIDIA’s grant will help support 50 cancer screening camps, providing no-cost services for 5,000 women and bringing awareness to 50,000 women living in high-need areas.