It’s been estimated that cancer affects 263,000 children worldwide every year, which means that every day, 720 new children are affected. It is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 in the United States. However, some organizations, like the Love Your Melon Foundation, are doing everything they can to help these children and to raise money for them.
The Love Your Melon Foundation is a non-profit organization that was created by college students at the University of St. Thomas in 2012. The foundation is still run by college students whose mission is to provide a hat for every child battling cancer in America.
Their mission statement is that “for every hat sold, another identical hat is given to a child battling cancer. Through funding from this Buy One – Give One program and donations, the Love Your Melon Foundation provides therapeutic entertainment and comfy hats to children battling cancer during the difficult cancer treatment process.”
While just one hat may not seem like much, each hat purchased results in one hat being donated to a child affected by cancer. Why a hat, though? When children, or anyone, are affected by cancer, a common treatment option is chemotherapy. However, as most people know, chemotherapy results in hair loss, which can not only be devastating to children’s self-esteem, but also dangerous to their health. Love Your Melon provides high quality winter hats to protect their heads and make them feel better. In addition to winter hats, they also have baseball cap and beanie options.
So far, the Love Your Melon Foundation has sold and given over 40,000 hats, but they’re about more than just donating hats. They also provide therapeutic treatments for children, which have been shown to increase success ratio for recovery. The founders of Love Your Melon, Zachary Quinn and Brian Keller, often participate in these treatments, which they call adventures. Popular adventures involve taking children on rides in airplanes, boats, helicopters, limos, often accompanied by superheroes.
On their website, it is stated that “therapeutic treatments make children battling cancer comfortable and provide the opportunity for them to talk to their friends and family about positive experiences rather than negative ones that involve the pain they are going through.”
During these adventures, children wear their hats which act as a sort of protection for them, physically, mentally and emotionally. The hats provide a sense of normalcy for them and allow them to be themselves and truly enjoy their adventure.
Love Your Melon’s first adventure was inspired by Zach Sobiech, who dreamed of seeing the clouds. They were able to take him on a helicopter ride after he was given just two weeks to live.
Sobiech is quoted on the site saying, “You don’t have to find out you’re dying to start living.”
Help provide a hat to children affected by cancer. Check out their website, loveyourmelon.com, for more information about how they help children and their amazing adventures. It’s also where online shopping for hats is located. Most hats are priced at $30, a small price to pay for the gift of hope.