For a child, a cancer diagnosis disrupts both their present and their future. In addition to the risk to their health and the need to travel for care, continuing their education becomes challenging, which threatens their potential. In Portugal, the Barzilai Foundation is launching a partnership to improve the situation for children fighting for both their health and their future.
Many Portuguese children who require advanced cancer treatments need to travel long distances to specialist facilities, pulling them out of school and away from their homes. The need to keep up academically weighs on these students; focusing solely on their cancer care places these children at academic disadvantage and risks pushing them a full year or more behind their peers.
The Barzilai Foundation is partnering with Acreditar, a national non-profit organization that accompanies families of children and young people with cancer during and beyond their disease. Besides psychological, social, housing, and other forms of supports, Acreditar invests in promoting education to keep their cancer diagnosis from derailing them academically. Acreditar provides various forms of educational support, including dedicated space for patients to study and education financial support. To amplify their impact, the Barzilai Foundation will be providing necessary updates to these study facilities that give students the technology and supplies they need to keep up with their academic demands.
Furthermore, this fall, we will be sponsoring twelve scholarships for students in Portugal who have survived paediatric cancer and returned to school full-time, as part of Acreditar’s educational support program. Through these scholarships, we will both ease the financial burden their families face while also making it possible to hire tutors to cover any gaps in their learning that happened as a result of cancer care.
The Barzilai Foundation will also be founding a hardship grant fund for students whose frequent travel is disruptive and who require additional support to stay connected to their studies.
“When a child faces a cancer diagnosis, normalcy becomes a luxury,” said Brandon Sosa, CEO of the Barzilai Foundation. “It’s a huge fight, and it’s easy to forget that all the other parts of their life don’t get placed on pause. We want these kids to keep moving forward with their studies, rather than losing time and endangering their future potential.”
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