Greetings!

We are contacting you on behalf of the BennettStrong Foundation.  We are a 501(c)(3) charitable foundation that helps provide support to families of medically complex children.

More importantly, we are reaching out to you as parents of a medically complex child who spent almost 8 months in the neonatal intensive care unit and another six months on the oncology floor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP).  Throughout our son’s first few years of life, we struggled to identify what our family needed to survive the intensive care unit.  Meaning well, our family and friends offered us support, saying ‘let us know what you need’. Unfortunately, we were so shell shocked with our experience and the stress of it all that we had no idea what we needed.  Fast forward eight years, and our son is navigating elementary school with an intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, and a feeding tube.  We found ourselves advocating for him and ourselves, answering emails and Facebook posts from parents like us, and helping local experts support medically complex families.  That’s how BennettStrong was born.

We’ve taken our experience and moved into action.  With the help of social workers and psychologists at CHOP we’ve created NICU Parent Survival Kits, meant to help parents identify healthy coping skills and bonding techniques to survive the NICU. (Did you know that for parents in the NICU beyond their due date, their divorce rate is high as 90%)?  When the pandemic hit, we raised over $70,000 worth of masks for parents and siblings so they could continue to be there for their baby.  We’re in the works with CHOP to create a state of the art resource for parents in the NICU.  We’re working with regional mental health providers to ensure care is available when families are discharged from a challenging inpatient stay.  Our goal is to have resources identified for families in our region prior to their discharge, thus creating a community of support for families.  Our hope is to reach these families early in their journey, providing maximum support to lessen divorce rates, decrease readmission to the hospital, and help special needs families not feel isolated.

Through our community engagement, you have been identified as an organization that can be helpful in accomplishing our goals.  Without meaningful support from local organizations and businesses like yours, we can not meet the needs of these very special families.  We’d love to partner with you in these projects, supporting the families we work with while also supporting your business. Please take a moment to check out our signature event: The BennettStrong Gala. Held every February, local experts, supporters, and families join together for a fun night out.  This year we are looking for a variety of sponsors, and a presenting sponsor, who will be integral in the success of our event. Please consider being a sponsor for this year’s gala!

Your action in partnering with us to provide meaningful mental health support to these families will create an even stronger and inclusive community in our region!

Thank you very much for your time and consideration. We would love to meet with you and collaborate. If you have any questions please feel free to reach out at 215-266-6188 or at bennettstrongfoundation@gmail.com(.)

Sincerely,

Mary & Greg Pellegrino