Tucked quietly into Harbor Square is the Max Foundation, an Edmonds-based organization with a world-wide reach.
Quietly is the key word.
Although the Max Foundation works with over 19,000 leukemia and blood cancer patients around the world – finding them medications, connecting them to resources and building support networks – it works from Edmonds without anybody in the community knowing much of anything about the foundation, officials admit.
“We have been hiding in Edmonds,” executive director Pat Garcia-Gonzalez said from her office Tuesday. “We have been too busy.
“We are just now getting our heads up from the business of our work and seeing that we are doing a lot of good. But, if people knew we were here, we could be doing a lot more,” she said.
With patients in 120 countries, and full-time employees in 12 of those, the Max Foundation has always made-do with an annual budget around $1.5 million and its partnership with Novartis Pharma, a Switzerland-based pharmaceutical company.
Patients who are screened and approved by the Max Foundation are eligible for donations of one of Novartis’ cancer-fighting drugs, and the rest of the Max Foundations’ services.
That includes tapping into social networks that help remove the stigma of cancer in developing countries, and resource networks that span the globe.
The Max Foundation works in Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Argentina, India, Afghanistan and many other countries through the world. It also works locally in the United States, mostly with minority and underserved patients, said Erin Schwartz, the patient services project manager.
Officials also want to put more social workers, or MaxStations, in more countries. In Sudan, for instance, there are at least 400 leukemia patients who could use more Max Foundation assistance, Garcia-Gonzalez said.
The personal touch from the local employees means a lot, she said.
“Everybody needs hope and everybody needs somebody to talk to,” Garcia-Gonzalez said. “We really focus on the humanity of our patients.”
The foundation wants to roll out more resources to more people everywhere.
In India, where the Max Foundation works with nearly 6,000 patients, the stigma of leukemia can keep family members from getting married, Garcia-Gonzalez said.
“So many people deal with cancer in isolation,” she said. “We want to change that.”
Despite the global reach, the Max Foundation has little local presence in Edmonds, but the foundation wants to change that.
This month, the foundation is establishing Max’s Neighborhood, an advisory group made up of local advocates and experts, said Carly McDowell, the foundation’s development director.
It has also started soliciting for donations on its Web site — www.maxaid.org — and is hoping to host a benefit concert in Edmonds later this year.
McDowell is also pursuing grants, and is looking for a local corporate business partner, she said.
The foundation’s goal won’t change. It wants to help cancer patients in the developing world, and underserved people in the United States, it just wants to do more.
The organization feels as if it must, Garcia-Gonzalez said. She says the work — because it brings people together to help each other — is as much a movement as it is patient outreach.
“The movement is what creates change deeply in the communities we work in,” she said. “The movement is what will create acceptance of cancer.”
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