HOPE BLOOMS

Traci Tays and Faith Mischel-Golden have been working together at Gledhill Elementary in North Hills for three years. Faith is the preschool special education teacher and Traci is her assistant. In April 2003, Traci was diagnosed with leukemia when her second daughter was one week old and oldest daughter was three. Traci underwent chemotherapy and total body irradiation followed by a bone marrow transplant at City of Hope.

When Faith came across the Big Sunday Volunteer Project she knew it was her chance to involve the teachers in giving back to the community and signed Traci on as her co-chair. Big Sunday is an annual volunteer weekend supported through a partnership with the office of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa. Last year, 50,000 volunteers from hundreds of congregations, schools, offices, clubs and other groups volunteered at more than 300 nonprofit agencies and institutions.  Faith and Traci chose to create potted paper flowers as their project and quickly organized a work team. They soon realized that their first step would be to find a place to donate the flowers.

Traci called Linda Baginski, patient resources coordinator at City of Hope. Linda chairs City of Hope’s annual National Cancer Survivors Day celebration in June, which was about 10 weeks away. She told them that she happened to needed dozens of centerpieces for the event and their offer couldn’t have come at a better time!  On June 3, the survivors day tables were topped with 150 of the centerpieces, lovingly handmade by the generous volunteers from Gledhill Elementary School.

Traci and Faith noted that Big Sunday volunteers come from many neighborhoods and volunteer all over the greater Los Angeles area. There are volunteer opportunities for every passion, every talent and every age. Projects are scheduled throughout the weekend to work with any schedule and can last anywhere from one hour to two days.