At a wedding, Emile Joseph Issa, MBA, BS, met Dr. Roula Farah, the bride’s sister. Issa, a nine-year MDRT member, had spent two years in medical school and struck up a friendship with the pediatric oncologist.

More than 20 years later, that chance meeting, and an endorsement from Issa, led to $50,000 — the largest grant through the MDRT Foundation’s Global Grants Program — being awarded in 2025 to CHANCE (Children Against Cancer), an organization Farah founded shortly after her sister’s wedding. Farah had returned to Lebanon after several years studying and working in the U.S. and encountered a 6-year-old boy with a huge tumor in his chest and chicken pox who needed to be admitted to a hospital. Four hours after Farah brought the boy and his dad to the hospital and filled out the paperwork, she found them sitting in the rain in a parking lot. They were turned away because they couldn’t pay.

“I was totally shocked to see that nobody would treat him unless he paid in advance,” Farah remembered, adding that 85% of childhood cancer is curable when treated properly. The boy died, even after Farah arranged a house call from a surgeon. “Seeing him sitting in this huge bed, very sick, I felt completely powerless and helpless and that any knowledge and certifications are useless when we can’t do anything to help a child in need. No child should ever die again because of a lack of funds.”

The founding and impact

So, she started fundraising initiatives at a Beirut hospital like encouraging kids to draw pictures and collecting the art for a calendar that is still published and sold each year. When the head of her department told her she needed to register her efforts as a nonprofit organization, Farah launched CHANCE to give any child, no matter who they are or where they come from, a chance to fight cancer or serious blood diseases.

Since 2005, CHANCE has supported 850 children through eight hospitals across Lebanon thanks to volunteering, awareness campaigns about cancer warning signs and more than 15,000 hospital donations.

Last month, a 26-year-old man visited Farah, which is uncommon at a pediatric clinic. He asked if she recognized him. She did not. Then he disclosed that she treated him when he was 6 and battling leukemia. Now returning to Lebanon from Germany for his brother’s wedding, he came straight to the clinic from the airport before even seeing his parents.

“I’m still alive because of CHANCE,” he told Farah, reminding her about his father, a farmer in the countryside who couldn’t pay for his son’s treatment.

“This is the best example of CHANCE saving people’s lives and the gratitude that results,” Farah said. “This man would not be among us if CHANCE had not paid for his hospitalizations and his treatment.”

Mind and body

When a patient can’t afford care, they are referred to CHANCE, which reviews the information. Once the child is approved, CHANCE pays hospital bills on their behalf. Other services include art therapy and pain management, a program connecting new CHANCE families with previous ones, and older women who weave dolls and make clothes so patients can cover and warm their heads with wool hats after their hair falls out.

The MDRT Foundation grant funds the training of psychologists on psycho-oncology and nurses on palliative care, so they can deliver a more holistic approach that alleviates patients’ symptoms and focuses on their well-being. That includes education about processing the fear, anxiety, depression and anger a child diagnosed with cancer experiences; how to tell brothers and sisters about their sibling’s diagnosis; how to handle the next steps with school and classmates; and much more.

“This is very heavy emotionally and psychologically, and we haven’t been addressing this properly in hospitals in Lebanon,” Farah said. “The basic rights of a child are not to suffer and to have access to proper care.”

While there is never a bad time to help sick children, Lebanon is going through a difficult period. Between the explosions in Beirut in 2020 and the subsequent economic crisis, many people served by CHANCE are out of work or homeless. Some sick children have stayed in cars for days at a time with nowhere else to go.

“The psychosocial, psycho-emotional burden is very high,” Farah said. “We’ve seen and heard many stories from kids who have been traumatized and found a big need for this program.”

Issa, whose kids are now 22 and 24, has long followed CHANCE’s work on social media and admired how the organization supports children and their families through the social and psychological challenges they are facing. His understanding escalated after attending a CHANCE fundraising dinner about nine years ago, and in 2020 he helped the nonprofit receive a $1,000 MDRT Foundation grant to support a program that collected unused and unexpired medicine for needy families. Issa, of course, knows that the $50,000 grant can make an even bigger impact, especially as his wife is in her own fight against leukemia.

“Now that I have a cancer patient at home, I know what families endure,” he said. “CHANCE not only helps kids on the medical part, but they also understand the human part.”

Endorse a charity to receive funding through the MDRT Foundation’s Global Grants Program by scanning the QR code. Deadline for applications is September 1.