Mama Bears Fighting Childhood Cancer

Needs

Our goal is to provide a Hospital Survival Wagon or Clinic Cart for every family with a child diagnosed with cancer in Northern California. This year we have delivered to 90 families, and we are only in month four of 2025. We anticipate delivering to 300-350 families this year as we realize last year’s numbers are still lower than what we expect. Between December 2022 and December 2023, MBFCC delivered 191 wagons and 23 clinic carts. During our first year of providing wagons, we were still working on connecting with all eight children’s hospitals in Northern California. In 2024, we doubled the number of wagons provided, reaching 287 families and we added an eighth hospital in 2024.

Families and children experiencing a childhood cancer diagnosis face several challenges that are not comprehensively addressed through insurance, hospital care, or other community-based organizations. MBFCC aims to meet parents and children during these darkest moments, to offer emotional support, tangible items to aid in comforting them and their child during a hospital stay, and ongoing navigation and educational services provided by volunteers who have experienced a childhood cancer diagnosis. Some of the greatest practical needs can include a good night’s sleep, access to books, videos, streaming services, comfortable sleeping arrangements, storage for snacks and refreshments, etc.

A Hospital Survival Wagon costs $500 and is filled with necessary items for the parent and child. Each item has been identified by a family with a child diagnosed with cancer as an item that is necessary to help care and provide comfort during treatment. Included in the wagon is a mattress topper for the parent to have something soft to lay on top of the hard recliner, a mini fridge to store snacks and drinks, a Roku and soundbar for streaming favorite shows and movies, a silk pillowcase for a child’s tender head experiencing hair loss, a book light to allow the parent to be able to read or sit up with their child without turning on the overhead lights during those long anxious nights when a parent is unable to sleep, a bathroom kit complete of all the personal hygiene essentials, a cooler bag with the cooler-pack for transporting food to the hospital, a weekender bag for a change of clothes, a market bag to carry smaller items, a notebook and pen, our plush teddy bear, room decorations, a bed caddy to stay organized, and for at home a weekly pill dispenser and a thermometer for when a child is neutropenic.

The Clinic Cart costs $250 and is filled with some of the same items to help get through long, exhausting days at the outpatient clinic.

Mama Bear's goal is to provide a Hospital Survival Wagon or Clinic Cart for every family with a child diagnosed with cancer and receiving treatment at a Northern California Children’s Hospital. MBFCC's goal is to ensure that no parent walks this journey alone and is immediately and sustainably supported with resources throughout their child’s cancer treatment journey. Our vision is to expand to Central California and ultimately Southern California to ensure all families in California are receiving the support they need.