Four Diamonds Thanks You For A Record Breaking Year!

To our Mini-THON participants

Thank you will never be enough! Your hard work makes our jobs an absolute pleasure. Your hard work employs researchers, doctors, and specialty care providers. Your hard work allows families to experience hope in their darkest times. Your hard work gets us that much closer to better treatment options and one day a cure.

You spent countless hours planning, executing, and debriefing fundraisers. You taught your peers the ins and outs of Donor Drive. You educated the community about pediatric cancer. You woke up early and stayed up late working out the details to make sure that your Mini-THON was perfect. You sacrificed time and energy all FTK. And as service goes, you will never really know the influence you had in those moments. What we ask of you is this: regardless of the challenges you may have faced throughout the year, please don’t forget the lives that you did touch. Your school’s Mini-THON just may have been the thing that made a student feel welcome at your school, it may have allowed faculty to realize the potential of the next generation, and it directly helped the lives of those being treated at the Penn State Children’s Hospital. For you have created a ripple effect. Those lives you have touched, will go on to influence hundreds and even thousands more. By choosing to participate in Mini-THON you are stepping up, like so many others like you, to change the world for the better. No matter what amount you raised, or how satisfied you were with the result, your Mini-THON has impacted the lives of students, teachers, administrators, community members, family, friends, and those whom you give hope. Hope not just for finding a cure, but hope for a global change.

You are making a change

It’s easy to forget the impact that your work has when you are caught up in the details. Are there enough activities during a specific hour? How much food is too much? What if we don’t reach our goal? How much longer until I can sit down? If you haven’t given it to yourself yet, here is your permission—take a step back. Look at what you created; look at what you’re a part of. Be proud!

Because of your passion for ending childhood cancer were are able to grow Mini-THON into what it is today. Without the creativity, determination, and heart of students like yourself, we would not be able to make such great strides in our research or offer such great specialty care providers. Thank you for all that you have done this past year and for all of the great things we know you have in store this coming year!