Asante Sana! (Thank You Very Much!)

Dear Friends,

You may know me best as a guy who chases ghosts and monsters. But I’ll tell you something that’s really scary… watching a loved one battle cancer. I’ve lost family and close friends to cancer, I know first-hand what that suffering is like. But I also know the incredible hope, love, and joy that can come from dealing with this disease. I know it can bring people closer together, it can force us to put aside petty differences, and it can push others to do great things to help out.

This is where you come in. I need your help. You see that photo above? That’s Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, in eastern Africa. It’s 19,341 feet tall. The tallest mountain in Africa. The route to the top will require me to hike 45 miles. The air at the summit is thin, and the climb takes both physical and mental toughness—which I know is nothing compared to battling cancer, but still, it’s not a walk in the park.

I’m heading to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro in March of 2017 to help raise money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. By participating as a member of Team In Training TNT, I’m raising funds to help find cures and ensure access to treatments for blood cancer patients.

Your donation will help fund treatments that save lives every day; like immunotherapies that use a person’s own immune system to kill cancer. You may not know it, but every single donation helps save a life with breakthrough therapies such as these. Patients need these cures and they need your support.

I’m going to take a lot of pictures, and I’ll write a short book about my experience on Kilimanjaro with a portion of the proceeds from the sales of that book going back to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. If you help out, I have some ways to give a little something back to you:

Donate $50 – I’ll print your name in the special thanks section of my book on the Kilimanjaro experience (unless you prefer to remain anonymous--you'll receive an email asking permission).

Donate $250 – I’ll include your name in the book, plus I’ll pose for a photo at the top while holding a sign that says thank you and your name printed on the sign. When I get home, I’ll print out an 8x10 of that photo and mail it to you autographed as a thank-you.

Donate $500 – I’ll include all of the above, plus I’ll mail you a free autographed copy of the book when it’s ready.

If everyone helps just a little, I can get to my personal goal of raising $25,000. My sincere hope is that with your help, we’ll blow through that number and make a big difference!

Kilimanjaro is 19,341 feet tall. Need a number to donate? Consider donating $19.34 – that’s one penny for every 10 feet that I climb. Of course we’d welcome larger donations, and smaller ones also help. You climb a mountain one step at a time. The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization which means your donation is tax-deductible. They process all of the payments and issue you a receipt.

With the help of your contribution, you can be sure that every step I climb brings us all closer to a world without blood cancers.

If you prefer to mail your donation in the form of a check, please make it payable to: Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (and note somewhere on the check Jeff Belanger Climb2Cure), and mail it to: Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, 9 Erie Drive, Natick, MA 01760. Please also check with your employer! Some companies offer a matching gift program that can help double your donation.
 

Thank you!

-Jeff Belanger
#Climb2Cure