Pablove Foundation

Pablove shutterbugs is a participatory healing arts education program that teaches children living with cancer to develop their creative voice through the art of photography. Pablove offers a photography curriculum for children and teens living with cancer that includes an all-cost-paid introductory class, summer camp, and an advanced class, where students learn to work with photography as a means to advocate for cancer research and explore their identity while living with pediatric cancer. Pablove has been able to gather remarkable resources to support this mission by partnering with art institutions such as the museum of modern art (moma) in new york city, the huntington library, art museum and botanical gardens in los angeles, and sawyer yards in houston. Our students find respite from the difficult routine of treatment while they focus on a fun new activity: learning about photography. Every Pablove shutterbugs course culminates in a graduation and yearly student gallery shows to celebrate our young photographers - with some in-person and some virtual courses in 2022. Print sales at Pablove's gallery shows directly support the powered by Pablove research grants program. 2022 program successes stand on the shoulders of the Foundation's 2020 pivot to virtual courses. Beyond the main program centers in los angeles, the bay area, seattle, new england, new york, Louisiana, and houston, Pablove is serving kids in 27 states nationwide - including a steadily growing number of students who participate directly from their hospital room. For the first time since the pandemic, the Pablove Foundation invited shutterbugs alumni from across the nation to join the in-person Pablove shutterbugs summer camp in beautiful arrowhead, ca, where memories and friendships were made to fight childhood cancer with love. In total, Pablove enrolled 215 kids in 13 in-person and virtual classes in 2022.it is easy to see the joy that our programs bring to our Pablove kids. Moreover, we are committed to making a real difference in the quality of life (qol) of our kids. We continued data collection for a comprehensive scientific evaluation initiative. By adopting a widely applied and validated qol assessment we found that by the end of the shutterbugs program, scores for both the younger children and teens, showed statistically significant gains in quality of life. This is a profoundly important validation of the positive effect that our shutterbugs activities have for the kids we serve, and Pablove will continue to monitor and evaluate the qol and other learning impacts of our courses to continuously improve and optimize our programs to further increase benefits.

Pablove's powered by Pablove childhood cancer research grants program is focused on awarding $50,000 seed grants to promising, early-career investigators, enabling them to discover and apply novel approaches to understanding childhood cancer, widely distribute their findings and gain substantially greater funding for larger, more intense research projects and programs. This strategy has been remarkably successful in providing a Foundation for exceptionally valuable scientific breakthroughs in both scientific and clinical knowledge. Pablove's dream is to ensure that no brilliant, promising scientist goes unfunded in the initial phase of research needed to advance from bench to bedside. Children everywhere are in need and are waiting for the innovative treatment options and cures their research provides. In 2022, Pablove awarded three (3) powered by Pablove seed grants, and continued sponsorship of four (4) ongoing projects with investigators across the globe. Pablove's research is conducted in prestigious institutions including the hospital for sick children in toronto, canada, the university of Texas, southwest dallas, Texas, the functional electrical stimulation institute in cleveland Ohio to name just a few. Each project is focused on a different rare pediatric cancer, including opsoclonus myoclonus syndrome, pediatric brain tumors, wilms tumor, and acute myeloid leukemia. Pablove strongly believes in the need to support these cutting-edge initiatives to reveal stunning new pathways toward better treatments and ultimately cures for these challenging, often devastating, pediatric cancers. Pediatric cancer research continues to be an underserved need and we are here to do our part to make a difference. Investments to find more treatments and to reduce side effects must be found to protect the future of these precious kids.