Fundraising Dinner To Save A Young Mother

By Laura Fawaz, Contributing Reporter

Dearborn, MI–Last Friday night, over 1,000 people gathered at Greenfield Manor in Dearborn, MI; not for a concert or a club promotion, but for a fundraising dinner to help save the life of a local young Mother.

Amal Fawaz, 27, is a single mother of two young boys, and was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma cancer four years ago.  After being successfully treated, in October of 2011, the cancer returned.  This time, the cancer is not responding to chemotherapy.  Suggested by her doctors, she uses her own bone marrow after chemo for a transplant.  This was done to buy her a little bit of time until she found a perfect bone marrow match.  This procedure was done a couple of months ago, and successfully.  But, the cancer came back last August, and it did so aggressively. 

Now, she is in desperate need of a bone marrow match, with her doctors giving her just four months to live.  Fawaz, along with her dedicated team of volunteers, has been working around the clock with the Be The Match Organization, a national marrow donor program.   They’ve also been working to spread the word and sell tickets for this fundraising dinner.

At last Friday’s fundraising dinner, Fawaz’s friends, family members, doctor, and a representative working with her from Be The Match, all spoke on her behalf.  Sighting her illness, along with her positive attitude at all times and in every situation.  Though their objectives was to raise money to help with Fawaz’s medical expenses, and to process the bone marrow applications, costing $100 per applicant, their main focus was to raise awareness on the illness, and to inform people on what it truly means to donate bone marrow. 

Since Fawaz’s cancer returned and she has been looking for a bone marrow match, her volunteers were now on a mission.  They went out to local mosques, grocery stores, local sporting events, etc, all to encourage applicants to get swabbed to see if they could be a potential match for Amal Fawaz.  At the same time, registering on Be The Match’s donor list so that if they are not a match for Fawaz, they could be for another person in the future.  Again remember, that though it is quite necessary to register as many applicants as possible, it still costs $100 per person.  This is another reason why a fundraising dinner was held.

The Be The Match organization was said to have helped set up a website, training volunteers and helping the team by providing them applications, and processing them from the many bone marrow drives held.

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