Reporter’s notebook: kids, cancer, schools, take 3
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- April
- 22
Anna Gottlieb, executive director and founder of Gilda’s Club Seattle.
“We didn’t do a lot of teen things. We couldn’t get kids to come into the clubhouse. They didn’t want the stigma of it. We were sitting around brainstorming ways to get teens in and I said ‘why don’t we try a teen writing contest?’
“The foundation said, ‘I don’t think kids will do it’ but they agreed anyway and we put a brochure together. This is the our third year doing it.
“I think our first year, we got about 50 essays and they were mind-boggling. They were unbelieveable. Now you can read them online. They were incredible. They were things we kind of suspected kids might be thinking or feeling but they never talk about it. We had one girl who wrote shewished her father had died because his leukemia had taken up her childhood. This year, we had over 150 submissions.
“We found something that started out so innocently and grew into some of the most important things we do.”
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 am by Randi Weiner.
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