WOWW, we have already reached Week 4 of our campaign! First off, thank you so much to all of our supporters for helping us in our efforts to finally beat cancer! But we have not finished our journey in the Students of the Year Campaign just yet. To learn more and stay up-to-date, follow our Team instagram @aikensangelslls

This year we, Isabella Peralta, Sarah Porcha-Konjikusic, and Ellie Runnels, are privileged to be nominated as candidates to lead Team Aiken’s Angels, in The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's (LLS) 2022 Students of the Year Campaign.  Students of the Year is a seven-week fundraising competition led by high school students to raise money to support LLS and their mission. We are writing today to ask for your support of our campaign and LLS’s mission to find cures for blood cancers and to assist patients and families. We have been given an opportunity to help others and we cannot do it without your support.

From January 27th – March 18th, Aiken’s Angels’s goal is to raise over $25,000! Yes, more than $25,000 in 7 weeks, which will go directly to LLS in support of its longstanding mission. We know this is an ambitious undertaking, but we also know we can achieve it with the help of amazing friends and family members like you! Please join this effort! 

We are leading this team in honor of our hero, Kennedy Martin. Kennedy is a high-school freshman who was diagnosed with T-cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma on June 4, 2020. She began chemotherapy the same year and will continue her treatments until 2023. Kennedy has endured over 100 days in the hospital and suffered numerous side effects. An avid volleyball player, she continues to stay positive that this campaign will spread awareness for childhood cancer. After seeing the horrible obstacles Kennedy and her family have had to surmount due to blood cancer, we eagerly wanted to participate in the life-saving mission of LLS. 

All three of us have also been touched by cancer during our lifetimes; we have experienced the indescribable pain of losing a loved one to this dreadful illness. Cancer affects so much more than the patient, bringing stress to the patients' families. The honor of potentially improving and saving the lives of thousands of blood cancer patients was one we could not let get past us. To learn more about our personal reasons for joining LLS's Students of the Year Program, see our personal whys on our fundraising page!

Although it may seem like a lot, one small donation can help propel patients to a better cancer-free future that sadly not everyone in the past has had. I ask that you please consider contributing in some way to LLS and my team’s joint effort to treat and cure all blood cancers. Approximately every 3 minutes, a person is diagnosed with a blood cancer. That someone can even be the person closest to you. Your donation/contribution saves the lives of strangers and possibly even those held dearest in your heart. 

Please visit this website often and tell friends who would also like to donate!

On behalf of blood cancer patients everywhere, thank you for your support! For more information about LLS, please visit www.lls.org