Charity Spotlight: Mikey’s Way Foundation

Mikey’s Way was founded by Mikey Friedman in 2005 after he was diagnosed with Desmoplastic Small Round Cell Tumor, or DSRCT. Seeing the patients around him struggling to cope with the reality of being in the hospital day in and day out, Mikey decided to start his foundation through Make-A-Wish to improve improve the lives of other children in the hospital, providing them with distractions and connections to the outside world which they had limited or no access to.

Mikey’s Way has donated laptops and other electronic devices to thousands of children with life-threatening illnesses. The foundation works to keep patients connected to their friends and family while they cope with long days undergoing procedures and treatments through endless hospital stays. Through these diversions, children stay stimulated and engaged by focusing on things like school work, communicating with their family or getting lost in a game. By fostering this mind-body connection, the body responds to the stresses of cancer-treatment in positive ways making the hospital stay a bit more tolerable.

While Mikey lost his battle to cancer in 2008, his memory continues to live on in the foundation that bears his name to this day. Mikey’s Way is a longtime partner of Second Chance by The Junkluggers and we have had the privilege of participating in several Mikey’s Way days, sponsoring donations of electronics with proceeds raised from furniture sales in our Second Chance warehouse in Stamford, Connecticut. When we wheeled the Connection Cart down the hallways of local Connecticut and New York hospitals, the joy on the children’s faces as we told them they could select anything they wished from the cart is a testament to the legacy that Mikey has left behind and we hope to continue to enrich the lives of children with cancer and other long term diseases through our partnership with Mikey’s Way.