Teenagers Bake Cookies for Chemo Patients
Written by Jan Jaben-Eilon Saturday, February 20 2010
What do you call a teenage boy who spends his time and energy baking cookies and blending fruit smoothies, and then creating a full-fledged, teen-run, nonprofit service organization to deliver those edibles to cancer patients on chemotherapy?
Ovarian cancer patient Lorraine Powell, 49 – who has been receiving chemotherapy almost nonstop for six years – calls him an “angel.”
Daniel Feuer, 17, is the founder and CEO of Smoothie Kidz
“I love Daniel so much. He’d come over and hold my hand when I wasn’t feeling great. His friends, too, would sit and chat and ask our stories. His cookies are really good, especially the vanilla macadamia. The fruit smoothies are brought to us with little umbrellas. The pina colada is my personal favorite. It takes my mind off of what’s going on here.”
“Here” is the chemo room of Southeastern Gynecologic Oncology (SEGO) near Northside Hospital in Atlanta. It is here where Daniel, the son of gynecological oncologist Dr. Gerald Feuer, managing partner of SEGO, first brought his cookies and then started bringing blenders to whip up, on the spot, fruit smoothies for the patients. He was 10 years old when he decided he wanted to do something for the patients he’d hear about from his father.
Now a junior at Weber School, Daniel, along with 72 other teen volunteers, blends fruit smoothies not only at the SEGO chemo room, but also at Atlanta Cancer Care and the infusions centers at both Northside and St. Joseph’s hospitals in Atlanta. They’re responsible for getting supplies, organizing the operation, and now they are creating a 501(c) 3 organization. Because of publicity they have received, they even have the financial backing of Atlanta-based franchise operation, Planet Smoothie.
The sponsorship from Planet Smoothie provides Smoothie Kidz $1,000 in credit for fruit and 1,000 serving cups. Plus, the Planet Smoothie design team is helping to create the Smoothie Kidz logo.
“They’re also making our website for us and giving us four industrial blenders,” Daniel Feuer says. Smoothie Kidz hasn’t yet used the fruit credit because they need freezer storage space.
A $2,500 grant from A Hand Up Atlanta will help with that.
For the most part, the teens go to the chemo rooms during the summer or other school vacations, as part of their participation in Weber School’s Tik Club. Tik stands for Tikun Olam, the Hebrew term for trying to help repair the world, according to Weber Headmaster Sim Pearl. But Feuer has much bigger plans for the Smoothie Kidz.
“It’s been my dream to develop like this ever since my freshman year, but I hope it spreads even further,” he says. He plans to take the concept to college in another year and a half and hopes to eventually take it nationwide.
According Dr. Feuer’s administrative assistant, nurse Detra Morris, “The teens have learned to appreciate the patients as they are. The kids are not afraid to interact with the patients. And this makes the patients feel more normal when kids are comfortable coming up and talking to them.”
“The kids put smiles on the faces of the women (chemo patients),” says Powell, “in the summer when it’s so hot and they’re wearing their wigs.”
And of Daniel Feuer, Powell says, “He is one of a kind!”
Jan Jaben-Eilon was a founding staff writer of the Atlanta Business Chronicle. Since then, she has been the international editor of Advertising Age magazine and has written for such publications as The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Washington Journalism Review, and Consumer Reports. She is the author of soon-to-be-published (There is) Life After Cancer. Jan and her husband have homes in Atlanta and Jerusalem.
