Gold Out El Paso (GOEP) is a local non-profit organization that was founded in February 2020. Our mission is to spread childhood cancer awareness in our communities while providing assistance, comfort and hope to families going through the horrible disease. Our aim is to assist families and help ease a little of the financial burden so they can focus on the health and well-being of their family due to loss of income because of hospital stays. Since 2020 we have helped provide support in the form of, but not limited to, lodging, groceries, travel expenses, treatment expenses, financial assistance and much more. Many are not aware of how common childhood cancer is in our community. A child being diagnosed is a thought that does not go through any parent’s mind until they hear the dreaded words, “Your child has cancer.”
After diagnosis day, life will not be the same. There are many different types of childhood cancers that depends on the timeframe of treatment. Many factors go into determining how long the child will be hospitalized, how many months or years of treatment, and determining the prognosis. Many families, consisting of both parents, have to determine how time in the hospital will be but that is different for single parent homes. Life does not stop after diagnosis; bills will need to be paid and parents have to figure out how to make ends meet. Along with ongoing bills, there are many unexpected expenses that accumulate like medications, diagnostic studies, home health supplies, daily meal expenses, and sometimes funerals. GOEP will pay for diagnostic studies and medications needed in order to be discharged from the hospital. Due to lengthy hospital stays, families are gifted toiletries, air mattresses, daily necessities, gift cards for delivery meals, and even making personal grocery trips to deliver oncology children and their parents’ necessities or wants they might want while admitted. GOEP occasionally fills the family room with a variety of snacks to get families through the hospital stays. Childhood cancer not only affects the diagnosed child and parents, it also affects siblings and extended family like grandparents and close family who take the responsibility to help. Hospital staff as well as oncology families known that when they need financial help, they can contact GOEP and we will try our hardest. GOEP will rush in a moment’s notice to buy clothes and snacks to help refugees who arrived with sick children at the hospital only with the clothes on their backs.
GOEP is the first organization in El Paso to bring public awareness and show the community and surrounding areas what the color gold stands for. The pink ribbon is a universally recognized, but until recently the gold-colored ribbon was not known. September is the official month for childhood cancer awareness. GOEP has turned many downtown buildings, the Airway turbines, and the El Paso International Airport gold for the month of September. GOEP has made proclamations with the city and county and always inviting our local warriors to attend and tell their story. At the end of the month, GOEP organizes an evening parade that leads to the UMC’s visitor parking lot. We invite local and surrounding police department to attend, who drive up to the fifth floor and wave lights towards the seventh (pediatric oncology) floor at El Paso Children’s Hospital (EPCH). Inpatients on the seventh floor are also given lights to wave back at parade attendees. This is organized as a way to show inpatient families that they have community support. Throughout the years, families who were one year inpatient come back the following year and are able to attend the parade on the parking lot and express how they felt experiencing the parade in compared to out of the hospital, this parade brings many to tears. GOEP has held events with the Chihuahuas and Locomotives. GOEP invites oncology families, past and present, to attend these events, free of charge, and give families a day where they can bond with other oncology families. They get to share stories and give hope to families that are currently fighting. Oncology children get a day to feel normal, where sickness in not on their mind and spend a day in a fun event, just being kids with their families. Holidays are not the same, oncology children sometimes have to be admitted to the hospitals or be isolated from their extended families because of risk of illness. GOEP receives toy donations from the community and toys are gifted to oncology children and their siblings to help brighten their holidays.
GOEP relies on donations and sponsorships from our community to help our local pediatric oncology families. GOEP works closely with a local print shop to design and sell custom shirts for children going through treatment in order to raise funds. 100% of the proceeds go directly to the family. Before September, an exclusive GOEP t-shirt is designed and sold. As with the fundraising shirt, all proceeds help pay for the necessities mentioned beforehand. GOEP members are all volunteers, no one gets compensated for their time and efforts and we like to think outside the box for fundraising, i.e. local tattoo shop, brewery, and a wing restaurant. We believe that by seeking different fundraisers and opportunities we are bringing awareness to many others in our community because childhood cancer can affect anyone. Our organization is working closely with our local school districts to acknowledge and show awareness in September. Working closely with our local children’s hospital, families are given an application to register with GOEP.
GOEP is a fairly new nonprofit that is trying to do all we can with our limited resources. Due to fundraising mostly in September, our funds are very limited. The number of families registered with our organization, events have to have a capacity, only allowing a certain number of families to attend at once, giving each family an equal opportunity to request attendance to events. With the grant, we would be able to help more families with necessities, fill the family room with snacks more frequently, and provide foldable wagons, air mattresses and other necessities to all newly diagnosed and families currently hospitalized. Families have to carry many belongings in and out of the hospital during their stays. We would love to gift each family more gift cards to have meals delivered, be able to get necessities not only for hospital stays but for their home.
