All Saints students create chemo bags for Gildas Club

Students from All Saints Catholic School in Davenport have spent the past three months creating chemo care bags to support a Gilda’s Club Quad Cities initiative.

Gilda’s Club offers no-cost services and programs for those affected by cancer in the Quad Cities and surrounding areas. One of them is the chemo care bag program. Each bag contains items to cheer up patients and help them feel more prepared and comfortable when they go into treatment for the first time. The group distributes over 100 of these bags every month at cancer centers in the area.

The project began after Judith Costello, a paraeducator at All Saints, told Principal Mindy Altman about her personal cancer journey and her plan to wear scarves to school. The school realized this was an opportunity to teach students about cancer’s impact and the importance of compassion.

Students from kindergarten to eighth grade decorated each bag with a handprinted Japanese Plum branch, symbolizing hope as the first to flower at the end of winter. They painted images of hope on rocks to go with the care packages. Parents sent in items like fuzzy socks, hard candies and journals.

Nora Bosslet, Children, Teen & Family Coordinator at Gilda’s Club made a presentation to students last December, explaining the importance of the chemo care bags. “The students at All Saints were really engaged with the Cancer 101 presentation I did in December,” said Bosslet. “They had a lot of good questions! We loved the chemo care bags they designed.”

For more information on Gilda’s Club and the services it offers, click here.

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