Dear Friends and Family,

Welcome to my fundraising page!!

My name is Jules Ciatto and I am a junior at Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart. Recently I was nominated to raise funds for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society as a Students of the Year Candidate for the Gators Beat Blood Cancer team. The Students of the Year campaign is a fundraising competition between students in the National Capital Area in order to raise funds to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and their mission to cure blood cancers. The Campaign is held for seven weeks between January 23, 2021 and March 13, 2021. Last year, as many of you know, I was on the Gators Beat Blood Cancer Team as a team member and this year, alongside Katie Yost and Emma Dowd I will be leading the Stone Ridge team which was started by my sister, Francesca, 3 years ago. 

Last year, the Gators Beat Blood Cancer team raised its all-time high with a total of $197,000 for a second place finish to the campaign competition. In addition to the fundraising experience and fun working as a team, I also gained leadership, communication, and organizational skills throughout the process and I cannot wait to implement all I learned into the campaign this year. 

Every three minutes someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with a blood cancer, and every nine minutes, someone dies from a blood cancer. The money raised will go directly to support LLS and its longstanding mission to find a cure and to improve the quality of life of patients and their families. Since 2017, the U.S. FDA  has approved a remarkable 53 therapies just to treat patients with blood cancers, and LLS has helped advance 46 of these treatments. Stone Ridge Alumna, Meaghan Kilner '20 was the beneficiary of one of these treatments in her time at Stone Ridge, when she relapsed and was the first pediatric patient at Johns Hopkins, in a clinical trial, to receive one of these less toxic therapies to get her in remission. I am happy to say that Meaghan is still in remission three years later.  So every dollar you donate really does make a difference in the life of someone living with cancer.

In these times of uncertainty, blood cancer patients and their families need our help more than ever, especially as many blood cancer patients are immunocompromised. This global pandemic has impacted every aspect of cancer care and daily life it is known. COVID-19 is reshaping cancer care in real-time – magnifying the issues patients face already and leaving them with more questions than answers. Even during a global pandemic, blood cancer still prevails, and by signing up to raise funds for LLS, I have made it my mission to put the needs of these patients first. Please help me and my mission in curing blood cancer during this time of need. 

Thank you for your support and let's all work together to knock out blood cancer!! Be sure to visit my team's Instagram pages @gatorsbeatbloodcancer to see all the events we have scheduled and the progress we are making during the seven week campaign.  Please feel free to forward this message to your friends and family who might like to make a difference.

Warmly,

Jules