We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Marta Blanco a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Marta, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?
I first founded Sofia’s Hope in 2013 about a year after Sofia passed away. To lose a child is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I was hurting and trying to make sense of things. You see, we were really fortunate during Sofia’s cancer journey that we had a community of friends and family surrounding us with love and care. But we realized early on that not everyone had this kind of safety net.
We immediately got to work organizing toy and gift card drives, ordering food for staff and families on the floor—these efforts persisted through Sofia’s remission, later when the late effects of chemotherapy took hold of her heart, and after she passed away waiting for a heart transplant. Through it all, my community, my safety net rallied and showed support to the families at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Sofia’s treating hospital.
I was inspired to make a difference and help others through their treatments so they would know that they were not alone. It felt as if these patients and families had Sofia’s community surrounding them like they did us. So, I started Sofia’s Hope and was ready to answer the call to positively impact the South Florida childhood cancer community.
Except that’s when the fear set in—I thought how can I make this happen? I knocked on a lot of doors and slowly donations came in. But the truth was that I had never formally done this before, and I felt like I was in over my head. I organized a fundraiser, the first, at my home in South Miami.
It was overwhelming as there are a million details associated with events. We invited everyone we knew and then some. Through our network, I was introduced to Jamie Doherty, President and CTO of R2 Unified Technologies, a leading technology solutions provider of mid-market businesses, governments, and educational systems within the Southeast.
Jamie immediately took an interest in Sofia’s Hope. He asked questions, offered advice, and gave me my first real sign that Sofia’s Hope was here to stay—the night of the fundraiser, he announced that R2 United Technologies would pledge $10,000 annually moving forward to support our efforts.
The money makes a huge difference. But more than just the dollars, his commitment was a vote of confidence in the service we provided. It was absolutely everything I needed to continue.
From this act of kindness, we have built Sofia’s Hope to be a major service provider that partners with all six South Florida childhood cancer hospitals and serves over 2,000 patients and families annually.
Marta, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Sofia’s Hope was established in 2013, in honor of my daughter, Sofia, who beat Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at 4-years old and passed away over eight years later due to the late effects of the lifesaving chemotherapy necessary to treat her.
Since inception, Sofia’s Hope has provided approximately $400,000 in support to the childhood cancer community through the mission of funding research on late effects of chemotherapy, raising awareness about childhood cancer, and distraction therapy for patients and their families, including our annual art program.
Sofia’s Hope is dedicated to the area of pediatric cardio-oncology to help prevent what happened to Sofia from happening to other children with cancer. Because childhood cancer survivors have a 5x higher risk of death from cardio-vascular disease than the general population and their voices must be heard. Had dexrazoxane been part of Sofia’s treatment protocol, she would be here with us today. The medicine exists but needs continued research to drive innovation and universal protocol inclusion.
Sofia’s Hope is dedicated to the over 17,000 children diagnosed every year with cancer. With the help of our supporters we will continue to fight childhood cancer with HOPE!
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
In my professional life, I was a marketing executive, so I understand the power of creating and connecting with a community. I got to work creating content around Sofia’s Hope monthly outreach programs like Claymation Art Station projects, and our presence in the community. After the first 500 or so subscribers, things stalled.
Social media came after the days of staying home with my girls, so I sought help from local experts and asked for feedback and guidance. Local social media expert was instrumental in helping me to see how to further develop the Sofia’s Hope brand. I took for granted that while I know a lot about childhood cancer, most folks don’t know the stats, so I created a calendar to inform our community about the plight of childhood cancer. We developed a look and feel to visually represent the various patient service programs, fundraisers, etc. I post something through social media nearly every day. Consistency is the name of the game. Our content really resonated with patients’ families, and they began to follow us and share our handles. In the last few years, this grassroots community has grown to over 7,000 subscribers across all platforms. It’s an ongoing process, but we continue to move upward and onward!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
At Sofia’s Hope, we take stock in providing professional, ethical and excellent service to all we encounter. Whether you are a hospital partner, patient/family, donor, vendor, volunteer—we respect you, we appreciate you and we commit to providing a kind and positive interaction. I said it before, but it bears repeating, consistency is the name of the game. Our purpose is to make the lives of patients and families in the throes of childhood cancer a little better. My hope is that when you hear “Sofia’s Hope” in the community, it’s accompanied with a smile and a story of how we helped make a difference. A little kindness goes a long way…and so does hope.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sofiashope.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sofiashope/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sofiashope/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/sofiashopenpo