At a summer program for Northwestern, Femi Ololade, junior, met an intern who recruited him for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Student Visionaries of the Year program. The following school year, he reached out to juniors Hannah Loredo and Ethan Loredo as candidates to run alongside him. 

The program is seven weeks long and runs through a program called Student Visionaries of the Year until March 18. There are individual chapters with a total of 32 teams, and each group picks a subgoal of money put towards research, advocacy and direct care. The goal for the chapter in Munster is to raise a grand total of $100,000 for advocacy, which helps patients who cannot afford costly medication. 

“I am aware that cancer affects the lives of many, many people, and there is still a lot more than should be done to combat it and find many treatments,” Femi said. “I feel like more access should be taken now, especially since it’s such a bad problem.”

The amount of money raised is not publicly shared due to other competing teams. The team is no longer accepting applicants and has a total of 16 students; information about donations can be found on their website events.lls.org. Each team member has their own personal goals for raising money, reaching out to local businesses and placing advertisements all over. Both Hannah and Ethan joined, in part, in honor of their grandmother Karen Moses, who passed away in 2017 from metastatic breast cancer. 

“Seeing that from a young age, I feel like I can understand the pain that a lot of families go through,” Hannah said. “Especially since Leukemia is the number one cancer that children get. That’s also a big reason I wanted to join because it’ll affect a lot of families.”