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Vidhi Patel, a Comprehensive High School senior, has created a charity to help children with cancer keep up with schoolwork.

(Jeanette DeForge/The Republican)

CHICOPEE - When her older cousin fell ill with non-Hodgkin lymphoma years ago, Vidhi Patel watched as he struggled to keep up with schoolwork while being treated for cancer.

"He had to miss school for months," she said. "It was hard to know what was happening in your subjects and you miss out on your friends and after-school activities."

Vidhi Patel

Her cousin, who was 12 at the time, is now healthy and a college student. But seeing him trying to balance schoolwork while he was ill left a lasting impression on her.

Now the 17-year-old Comprehensive High School senior is developing a charity, called Cancer Patient Succeed, to help children like her cousin keep up with their education while fighting illness.

Her first move is to collect donations of school supplies to create baskets filled with the materials students need while trying to study outside school. She is working with schoolmates, friends and family to collect donations of materials, as well as using some of her own money to buy supplies.

Patel soon hopes to start handing the baskets out at hospitals and clinics to children who need them.

"I need binders and notebooks and crayons and other things depending on the age of the children. I would have some toys in there, stuff to make it fun," she said.

Anyone interested in contributing to the project can contact Patel at vidhip99@gmail.com.

As time continues, Patel would like to expand the charity to connect volunteer tutors with students who need some extra help with their schoolwork.

"A student talking to another student is the best, I think," she said.

Patel would know, since she volunteered for some time to tutor her neighbor's children a few years ago.

Patel is heading to the University of Massachusetts Amherst after her June graduation to study political science, and eventually she plans to go to law school. While in college she said she wants to continue to develop the charity and start a program to get students to volunteer as tutors for cancer patients.

Now she is starting to contact hospitals and other medical facilities to see how to deliver the school supplies and find out how to set up a tutoring program.

"There is a reason this girl is winning scholarships," Guidance Counselor Robin Kenney-Bineau said. "She is a good kid and a hard worker and she deserves all the accolades."

This week Patel was surprised with a $1,500 college scholarship from Berkshire Bank because of her good grades and volunteer efforts.

"One of her traits is she is very modest. I did not learn about her charity until she was applying for scholarships," Kenney-Bineau said.

Along with working to create the charity, Patel is also a member of the National Honor Society, the Student Council and was named to the school's Student Leadership Team. She also was a member of the track team in her freshman year and helped her father at his store.

She is the daughter of Raju and Usha Patel and has a brother, Pratham Patel, who is finishing his freshman year at Comprehensive High.