"Empowering families experiencing illness to achieve optimal wellness through nourishing foods, wellness activities and meaningful gatherings."
Three pillars of the work
Food is medicine. When families are navigating serious illness, access to nourishing, whole foods can make a real difference. We know food to be a pillar of care.
Healing reaches beyond the body. We champion activities that restore a sense of normalcy, joy, and agency for children and families in treatment and recovery, from creative arts to outdoor experiences.
Community carries people through. We believe in intentional spaces, events, gatherings, shared tables, where families experiencing illness can find one another and know they are not alone.
A mission born from experience
Emmy's Friends grew out of lived experience: a family navigating a childhood cancer diagnosis, treatment, and the long road to "what comes next." What that family found, and what they needed, became the foundation's mission.
A family managing a child's life-threatening illness is already carrying more than any family should have to carry. Nourishing food, meaningful activity, and genuine community don't remove that weight. But they're part of what makes it survivable. Emmy's Friends funds and partners with the organizations providing those things.
Our values
- Illness doesn't diminish a family's right to nourishment, beauty, and joy.
- A child in treatment is a family in treatment, and exiting treatment is not the end of needing support.
- Community is a healing force, and its impact runs deep.
- A child in treatment has preferences, opinions, and a life that will keep happening.
- Wholesome food is medicine. Its absence during treatment and beyond is a gap we can close.
- Play and creative engagement bring fresh energy into heavy, dark situations. A prescription for fun is essential for healing and resilience.