Meagan Lockhart
Our second presenter is Becky Keller with the WunderGlo Foundation. Thank you so much for joining us and I can’t wait to hear more about the offerings that you have for the kids and then I think you have one for the parents as well.

Becky Keller 
Yes. Okay, so I don’t have any visuals, but I’ve provided flyers that I’ve sent that can be distributed to anyone who wantsmore of this information. To give you a bit of a background, The WunderGlo Foundation was founded by my daughter and only child Gloria Borges one year after her stage IV colon cancer diagnosis at the age of 28. She started a blog immediately which is also support, and continues to be alive, that is called WunderGlo. And it’s actually pronounced Wunder Glo. So Wunder in German means miracle and glo is Gloria and she received so many emails and requests on what she’s doing with lifestyle, diet, exercise, treatments and things of that nature, she knew one year after she had to go bigger. She also found that with colorectal cancer being the most underfunded cancer, she needed to do something where our mission funded curative research. We’ve funded 1.75 million dollars to date. So my daughter passed away in January of 2014, a little less than a month after her 32nd birthday. I left my 30 year career in commercial banking to take over WunderGlo. We are now in our 12th year as an organization. Cancer, taking away the ability for my daughter to have children, her being my only child, I’ll never be a grandmother, but WunderGlo is my baby to take care of and who I care about is the children who it affects. So I care about the patients, we do a lot of navigation, we have patient programs and with our affiliate doctors at USC Norris, and at Keck, I do a lot of patient navigation and support, which I will be also doing this morning. But cancer leaves a lot of shrapnel in its wake. And I believe that we all care about children who are in children’s hospitals and who have cancer themselves, of course. Of course we need to care about them. But I feel that there’s a forgotten group in there. And they are the children whose parents are going through cancer who possibly pass away from cancer, but they watch what happens. It also affects them financially. So in 2016, we started The Children of WunderGlo Programs. We currently have two programs and on our way to launch a third. But the first one we started back then is our holiday gift distribution drive. We give presents to the children whose parents have cancer or survivors or who have passed away, both locally throughout the country, we reach one family in Canada, and we reach one family in Malaysia. So we’ve been doing that now, this is our eighth year doing it. So I want to say it was 2017/2018 when we started our Children of WunderGlo Scholarships. It was inspired by a cancer patient who I supported, who went for his insurance for his two young children and found out that day that he had stage IV colon cancer and they denied his insurance. He worked up until about two days before he passed away because he wanted to make sure his two boys went to college. We started our WunderGlo Scholarships to support children who have lost a parent to colorectal cancer. Backup a little on the children’s presents. It’s for children of all cancers, it could be breast cancer, lymphoma, it is not just restricted to colorectal cancer. Our scholarships are. They are directed to children, graduating high school seniors, who are pursuing their secondary education and have lost one of their parents to colorectal cancer. I talked to them, I’m currently in the process of sending all their notifications out and they are so moved. And it’s so meaningful to them that a group sees them. And I always tell them, this is your graduation present from your mom or from your dad to you. Because we would never even know about you or be connected if you didn’t lose a parent to the disease that we’re trying to eradicate through our research funding. So it’s an amazing program that is offered. As of this year, we’ll have awarded 33 scholarships to date. And we’re continuing on. We always look for greater support in that. We have the GPA at a 2.0, the minimum GPA, because we’re not going to expect that you’ve lost a parent to this disease and your life’s been easy and you’re a 4.0 student. So it is not based on GPA. It’s based on your essay, letter of recommendation and other factors that our scholarship committee votes on. We wind up having anywhere from nine to 12 in the voting committee. I don’t vote because I know too much about the kids. Hey, you didn’t send me this report yet. I don’t want anybody penalized because they weren’t able to get me all the paperwork the way they should have. The next program that we have is for patients, survivors, caregivers and their children if they like and that is our monthly Reiki and Guided Meditation Program that we’ve had since 2015. We had it on site at a place in Los Angeles for patients everywhere, cancer patients of all types in Southern California and then on site at USC Norris Cancer Comprehensive Center for the patients that received treatment there. COVID changed it, like it changed everything, moved us to a Zoom format, which is actually pretty wonderful. People don’t have to drive in that stressful traffic to get anywhere. We’re able to reach people across the country. Anywhere can Zoom in for our peaceful hour and it truly is this little circle of love that we’ve got. Our Reiki Masters are otherworldly and just bring you the peace and the balance that you need for those days and there again I’m welcome for any questions afterwards. If you want to post my email, people can email me or text me or however they’d like to get a hold of me but I’m more than happy to discuss the program. Quick question to answer is a lot of people say if you’re in cancer treatment, can your child apply to our scholarships? No, because our board had approved the scholarships for someone who has lost a parent to cancer. What happens to colorectal cancer? Their lives are different. If you’re still living with your child, and you’re there at graduation, all these kids don’t have their parent at graduation. Now, in the event that we don’t place all of our scholarships that year, yes, we will consider colorectal cancer patients in treatment. But you have to have guidelines somewhere. You know, what happens after that? They’ll say, Well, I’m in treatment for lymphoma, and I’m in treatment for somethig else. You have to have a guideline. So our guideline is for students who have lost a parent to colorectal cancer and are pursuing nursing school, military, community college, four year, whatever they are pursuing. And that’s it.

Meagan Lockhart
Thank you, Becky, we do have a question.

Becky Keller 
Sure.

Meagan Lockhart 
When is the application window for the scholarships?

Becky Keller 
it starts January 1 through April 15th. And then we let the students know on May 10th. And that’s when we start sending everything to the schools and make sure that they have our scholarship, their award listed on their achievements as graduates.

Meagan Lockhart 
Awesome, that’s fantastic. Thank you so much. It was so great to hear more about what Gloria did, and the fact that you’re continuing her legacy. It’s been so successful for not only colon cancer research, but also reaching these underserved kids.

Becky Keller 
Yes, they’re kind of my grandkids to care about.

Meagan Lockhart 
That’s wonderful.

Becky Keller 
They mean a lot to me.

Meagan Lockhart
Thank you so much for coming.