STEP SISTERS

The Step Sisters' mission is to fund quality-of-life services, such as transportation to and from treatment, food delivery, child care and house cleaning, to local breast cancer patients. As a patient goes through treatment, the Step Sisters strive to alleviate some of the everyday chores of a patient so he or she can focus on recovery and healing while knowing they are not alone in their fight against breast cancer. At times, a patient needs additional assistance. The Step Sisters' Crisis Fund is designed to meet critical needs in the areas of housing, utilities and food stability, stepping in to provide support to patients experiencing a financial emergency during treatment.

The Step Sisters have a team of vendors to which our local hospital nurse navigators may contact to schedule a service for a patient. The nurse navigators are in a position to get to know each breast cancer patient at the hospital in order to decide which patients would benefit from the services of our vendors, either financially, physically or emotionally. Once a patients needs have been determined, the vendor service is scheduled and funding for this service is paid for by the Step Sisters.

Our fundraising efforts, direct donations from the public and grants provide the funding we need to pay for the quality-of-life services and the team of board members, advisors and volunteers help us make everything happen.

The Step Sisters have grown from partnering with one local hospital to 9 locations in just 5 years. The response to the work we have been doing has been supportive and positive. In the future, we'd like to see more needs being met at the current partnering hospitals as well as the funding necessary to expand to more hospitals in the Northern Virgina/DC Metro area.