Community Spotlight | A Communities Fight To #PaulverizeCancer
Creative Director
Published Friday, May 1, 2020
Right before the stay at home mandates came into play Gabe Peters, our COO, was approached by one of our clients about running a t-shirt fundraising campaign. That’s when she told him the story about her cousins’ son, Paul, an 11-year-old kid who LOVES his cat, Garfield. On January 30, 2019, Paul started to have some knee pain while sitting at his desk in school. He went to gym class to play dodge ball and left with a limp for the rest of the day. He took it easy the next few days which meant skipping soccer and gym class so that his knee felt good for their vacation.
Paul and his family spent the first week of February in Colorado skiing for a day and a half until his knee pain really limited him. He just hobbled around and enjoyed the trip, like any 11-year-old would do, rarely complaining and saying nothing was hurting him despite his apparent limp.
On February 11, he went to see his pediatrician and received x-rays which showed a fractured femur. His parents were amazed that this tough kid had been walking around and skiing on a broken bone the whole time. Later that day they went to see an orthopedic who told them there looked to be a tumor inside the bone causing the fracture.
The next day he saw a pediatric orthopedist in Akron who ordered a MRI stat! The MRI results came back with more concern on the tumor, so a biopsy was scheduled and performed on February 17th. It was the next day, February 18th, that the family got the heartbreaking call from the pediatric oncologist confirming that the tumor inside of Paul’s bone was cancerous.
On Tuesday, March 3rd, 2020, 11-year-old Paul started his first chemotherapy treatment. Life as the family knows it has completely changed. Over the next year, Paul’s journey to #PaulverizeCancer will continue with more chemotherapy, surgery, and followed by more chemotherapy.
Paul wanted his message to #PaulverizeCancer to be shared with his friends and classmates. So, when we were approached to run an online campaign – it was a no brainer. On April 1st, our team launched Paul’s t-shirt campaign to donate all of the proceeds to the family by using our fundraising platform, BrandedFor.Me. Naturally, the shirt had to have Paul’s buddy, Garfield, and his message to the world that he is going to #PaulverizeCancer. The shirt was launched, and the word was spread. The community heard and came together strong in support of Paul and his family’s mission. Over the course of just a couple of weeks 149 shirts were ordered!
In our company, it is our mission to better our customers, better the company, and better the world. We believe that if we can make sure our customers are taken care of then the latter two parts of our mission will fall in line. Ask anyone in our company what our values are and you’ll hear people, knowledge, marketing, and quality matter. In this trying time of the pandemic, we have made a huge emphasis on people matter.
It humbles us to know that even though the world has mostly shut down and been forced to isolate from one another, it doesn’t stop people across the world from virtually coming together and uniting as one force. People coming together to donate their time, money, and support is the ultimate emphasis on the value that people matter. However, Paul’s relentless fight to #PaulverizeCancer and willingness to share it and inspire everyone, well that’s just the ultimate meaning of Bettering Our World.