Lily is only eight years old, but she is already a real fighter. She beat cancer — and started baking cookies to help other children who are fighting for life.
Lily was just a baby when she had to undergo Ewing’s sarcoma. This is an oncological bone disease, terribly rare and very severe. But the girl coped, defeated the disease — and, becoming a little older, decided to help other children who have cancer. To earn money for charities that sponsor cancer research and directly help patients, the girl began baking and selling cookies.
This is a fairly common path for an American girl Scout who wants to raise money for a good cause. Three million girl Scouts across America bake cookies and go with them to the neighbors, offer them to teachers and passers-by to earn money for a cause that they consider good. Unusual was the eagerness with which Lily took up the case.
“I dreamed of showing other children that they, too, can be strong.”
And her dream is closer than ever to fulfillment — last year the girl baked and sold 32,434 cookies — a whole sweet mountain. The pandemic almost killed the charity business of other girl Scouts: everyone stayed at home, and when they met, they had to keep a social distance. But Lily and her mom didn’t give up. They created a Facebook page, where Lily told about her case — and began selling cookies over the Internet. And then they set up a small kiosk outside the gate of the house — and a queue of those who wanted to buy cookies and help children with cancer gathered near it.
“It’s more than just cookies,” says Trish, the girl Scout’s mom.
Lily’s project showed that in these difficult times it is important to buy not just a product, not just a baked piece of dough, but the idea behind it. Lily conquered not only the whole hometown, not only America, but the whole world. Her cookies were sent to Canada, England, Spain, Paris, Rome and even Egypt. People from both hemispheres joined Lily to show that nothing is impossible if you try hard to make your dreams come true.
“It feels like the world believes in me, and it’s incredible.”
For an eight-year-old girl, the logic of her buyers looks much simpler. “The world just hates cancer, Mommy. Hates cancer as much as you and I do.” And if we all get down to business together, we will be able to defeat him — once and for all. In the USA, Lily was joined by other girl Scouts of different ages: they, too, suffered from cancer and also dreamed of seeing a world in which this terrible disease would be treated as easily as a banal cold.
Together they became Team Lilly Foundation. The Foundation supports the families of children with cancer, prepares gifts for the holidays for the kids locked up in hospitals. And Lily and her team have prepared 5,200 boxes of cookies: half of the cookies will be divided equally between the children’s departments of two city hospitals and young patients of cancer hospitals in America — and the other half will be divided between the American military at remote overseas bases and the homeless here in the USA.
