Cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children and adolescents in the United States. Over the last 20 years the FDA has failed to focus on, or approve drugs for any type of childhood cancer. The average age of death for a child with cancer is 8, causing a childhood cancer victim to lose 69 years of expected life years; a significant loss to our world. How many Einsteins, Amelia Earhart’s, Martin Luther King’s, Eleanor Roosevelt’s, and Rosa Parks do we lose each year to this horrendous disease?
One Person CAN Make A Difference!!
Together we can find a cure. Until that day comes, we can support the families that are battling childhood cancer with the resources they need to fight!
Welcome to the Purple Society! We hope you will find the tools and education materials we have put together here important assets for your fight against childhood cancer. Take some time and explore our site, learn about childhood cancer and find new ways to support our lifesaving mission.
Every day, countless families, scientists, caregivers, donors and volunteers contribute time, energy and passion to our mission to add hope and support for those children battling childhood cancers.
We have achieved remarkable progress in our work to provide resources for the childhood cancer community, but the lives of children with cancer are still being cut short. We urgently need the public’s continued support. We will not rest until we find a cure.
It’s easy to take action through this website. In just a few minutes, you can refer a child, family, or friend, you can volunteer at a Purple Event, make an online donation, become a Purple Partner, find a Childhood Cancer Clinical Trial, or advocate for public policy changes benefiting those with childhood cancer.
We’re proud to have our website be ranked as one of the best non-profits websites in America by the International Academy of the Visual Arts and to have been voted The Most influential Non-Profit In Arizona by Arizona Foothills magazine.
You can be a part of our Purple world by following us on Twitter, view the latest videos on our YouTube and Vimeo channels, and join the conversation on our Facebook and Instagram pages. We look forward to working with you. Remember, One Person CAN Make A Difference!
Anthony Conti
Chairman | Co-Founder
The Purple Society
anthony(at)werpurple.org
AT THE PURPLE SOCIETY 100% OF RAISED FUNDS GO DIRECTLY INTO PROVIDING RESOURCES TO FAMILIES FIGHTING CHILDHOOD CANCER.
Our funded programs are:
Werpurple.org – The premiere online network for all things dealing with childhood cancer. There is no other online childhood cancer network that makes it easier to get valuable support. All of our tools are 100% free! No application process, no red tape, and no speaking to call centers. This includes research with a real person along with online tools to get quick accurate information on cancer types, treatment options, chemotherapy regimens, clinical trials, and valuable opinions from top oncologists. The network also provides tools to share your journey with friends and family. Providing educational information to millions of families all over the world.
Trials.pub – A privately hosted worldwide clinical trials map focused solely on childhood cancer. Our map ties directly into the data coming from the trial file itself. So when the file is updated, our system is automatically current. Delivering the most up to date clinical trial information available anywhere in the world. We have a team of interactive developers always working in the system to make it easier and better for families to get valuable clinical trial information for their child…free of charge. It’s so effective that even the hospitals are using it!
Nitalia’s Blankets – Delivering thousands of Purple Packages to children’s hospitals across the country. We make, collect, buy, pack and ship blankets, hats, socks, and scarves for children facing cancer. Over the last 3 years, (every Christmas and Spring season) we have delivered thousands and thousands of Nitalia’s Blankets to children. Nitalia started this when she was a patient at St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
The Purple Apartments – Families are stronger when they are together, which helps in the healing process. By staying at a Purple Apartment at the Ronald McDonald House, parents also can better communicate with their child’s medical team and keep up with complicated treatment plans when needed. They can also focus on the health of their child, rather than grocery shopping, cleaning or cooking meals. The Purple Apartments are the largest most lavishly appointed long term stay options for families in the United States.
Purple Goodies – Working with our Purple Partners, we collect, sort, bag, and deliver food to families on the oncology floor at hospitals around the country. Also on a weekly basis we fill the refrigerators and freezers at The Ronald McDonald Houses and Ryan House.
Purple Premieres – Purple Carpet Event for children and their families that are fighting cancer. Together with our Purple Partners, we create this award show style event to give the families a night to forget the anguish of the journey they are on. The child in treatment receives a swag bag filled with incredible things to take back to the hospital with them as well as professional family photos and memories to last a lifetime.
Aside from our staple programs, we help families with their financial burdens by issuing grants to help with Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy, donating food gift cards, helping with daily living expenses, helping with travel expenses, and providing medical equipment when necessary. A portion of the funds that are raised from major donations and third-party fundraising go towards expenses and overhead for our interactive network. The Purple Society has NO paid employees.
These are just some of the support systems we have in place for the families. Our goals are to work toward a future where cancer is a thing of the past. Together we can make that a reality.
The Purple Society proposes to participate in the conquest of childhood cancer by supporting collaborative research to identify appropriate targets, discover ways to hit these targets, and carry out clinical trials using the infrastructure of the national cooperative group.
Our Aims:
- Collaborative Basic Research: Starting with high-grade gliomas, The Purple Society will support rigorous preclinical investigation of patients’ tumor specimens provided by the CHTN bank to teams of qualified scientists who will agree to work collaboratively and in parallel to share, confirm, and prioritize discoveries and to rigorously evaluate preclinical models for testing in pediatric clinical trials.
- National Phase 1 and 2 clinical trials: The Purple Society will help to expedite development of parallel clinical trials measuring safety and efficacy of new treatments within the infrastructure of the NIH supported national cooperative group, Children’s Oncology Group.
- Access and accrual to trials: The Purple Society will promote awareness of, access to, and participation in clinical trials for patients through our website, personal advocacy, and social media.
- Impact: The Purple Society will continuously evaluate this model of foundation support to develop and facilitate approved and funded clinical trials with a long range goal of adoption by other foundations for other cancers.