Hempfield students participate in project benefiting cancer patients

Lining the hallways of Hempfield’s Wendover Middle School, seventh-graders are getting a lesson in math while preparing packs that will benefit cancer patients.

As part of the Chemo Comfort Care Totes Project, students are helping to fill totes and backpacks with supplies that will help cancer patients through chemotherapy sessions.

All while learning things like the volume of the bags and how many items can fit inside, according to Holly Hallman, project organizer and a seventh-grade math teacher.

“The whole purpose of the project is to provide some hope and comfort to someone who’s going through a very rough time in their lives,” said Hallman. She noted that items in the packs include blankets, socks, hats, journals, hand sanitizer, crossword puzzles, playing cards, inspirational message written by members of the community and more.

Now in its fourth year, the project has gradually grown into an event with volunteers filling a gymnasium at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. But due to the covid-19 pandemic, Hallman had to get creative knowing the normal event could not be held.

After soliciting enough donations to provide 400 packs, several seventh-grade teachers at Wendover worked to incorporate the project into the curriculum.

As students go about their day, science teacher Kristie McNeal teaches them about cancer cells and how they spread through the body.

Social studies teacher Mike Giorgianni tells his own cancer experience and then discusses volunteerism.

English teachers Claudine Fiorino and Jaime Gacek have students write inspirational poetry that will be added to the bags.

In other classes, like family consumer science, students write out recipe cards with foods that are gentle for those dealing with nausea.

“Let’s make a day out of it and make a lesson out of it,” Hallman said of the event, which began Thursday and will finish Friday.

300 bags will be packed

Over those two days, students will pack a total of 300 bags that will be delivered to Arnold Palmer Cancer Centers in Mt. View and North Huntingdon, Excela Health Frick Hospital in Mt. Pleasant and Allegheny Health Network Hempfield Neighborhood Hospital.

Because some of the centers have to quarantine the packs as part of covid-19 protocols, Hallman said, an additional 100 will be packaged at a later date.

This is the second year that around 400 totes were packaged. The project took off after 2017, when up to 60 totes were packaged, becoming outlets for not only community members to give back but also for students personally touched by cancer.

This year, Hallman is hopeful the project can help patients a little extra who are struggling with a cancer diagnosis while having to social distance from family.

“This could be something that someone who was feeling alone, it could turn their day around and they could really say to themselves, ‘Wow, these kids were thinking of me,’ or ‘These people from the community that wrote these cards are thinking of me,’ ” Hallman said. “I think that that makes it a little bit more meaningful for somebody.”