Rödl Employee Fund for Children's Aid: Support for the “Pro Mater Sano e.V.” association through the City Cycling 2021

As part of the City Cycling 2021 campaign, 21,977.00 km were cycled across Germany. This value was doubled by the Rödl Employee Fund for Children's Aid, so we “earned” EUR 4,395.40 that could be donated. Our colleagues offered some great suggestions as to who we could support with this donation. Thank you again for this!

Charlotte Arnold and Carina Binder from the executive board of “Pro Mater Sano e.V.” were very pleased when we told them about the decision. 

 
Below we report on how the donation has been used:

Jennifer has breast cancer and has two children aged 17 (girl) and 5 (boy). Her son attends kindergarten, but is currently still at home due to the coronavirus situation. 

 

The family is in a very tight financial situation. Jennifer is a single parent and only receives Hartz IV benefits. In addition to cancer, she suffers from a chronic back condition. The children needed warm winter clothes in January, but they could not afford to buy them. In addition, the family had to face the problem of paying an electricity bill (back payment) amounting to 242 euros. It was also hard, if not possible at all, for the family to finance co-payments for the therapy. 

 

In the meantime, with the support of “Pro Mater Sano e.V.”, Jennifer succeeded in obtaining a co-payment exemption from the health insurance fund. We supported Jennifer and her family with around 550 euros. Also the issue of electricity bill was dealt with.

 
 

Nadine has breast cancer and three children aged 3, 13 and 22. Also this family's financial situation was extremely tight. Nadine was originally the main breadwinner in the family, but unfortunately could no longer provide for her family due to her illness. The application for sickness benefit supplement was rejected by the health insurance fund (because she had another illness when she got cancer). Her husband has a small side job as a janitor, but earns too little to cover current expenses. In addition, he is currently busy taking care of his own mother, who requires nursing care and needs to be looked after by him.

 

Nadine's eldest son (22 years old) had a serious car accident in which he suffered several vertebral fractures some time ago; due to the severe pain, he has become addicted to painkillers. Because of this and due to severe psychological stress, he was no longer able to continue the actual treatments, so that the Employer's Liability Insurance Association (BG) discontinued the benefits. Therefore, Nadine currently has to support her son both financially and psychologically. Her youngest child is currently not attending any day care facility because she is terribly scarred of contracting corona-virus during her cancer treatment.

 

“Pro Mater Sano e.V.” was able to help Nadine's family with financial support amounting to around 1,000 euros. In addition, the association helped file the application for a household help, the application for exemption from co-payments for medication and with various other issues.

  

  

Samya (34 years old, 3 children aged 4, 6 and 8) fled from Syria to Germany with her husband and their children. After initially battling breast cancer, the disease unfortunately returned in November 2021 in the form of a brain tumour. In the family's flat, she collapsed in severe pain and was taken to the hospital. The father, who had found a job in Germany, was given unpaid leave by his employer so that he could take care of his wife and their three small children. The hospital where Samya was admitted and treated from then on was more than 30 km away from the family's home – with no public transport connections. 

Unfortunately, it turned out that the cancer was no longer curable. The father took the three small children to the hospital every day so they could be with Samya. In the course of the terrible disease, Samya went blind. Due to the daily travel costs, without being paid his salary, he and his family had to struggle with enormous costs. 

Thanks to a donation of 800 euros by the association “Pro Mater Sano e.V.”, the father and the children were able to go to the hospital several times a week and be with Samya in her last days. The children and the father had to say goodbye to their mum and wife a few weeks ago. She died then in hospital. 

 
   

Andrea is 40 years old and also has breast cancer. She has four children aged 14 months, 11, 13 and 19 years. 

As the treatment is a high financial burden on the family and because the mother receives only little income during parental leave, the family is in a very tense financial situation. 

For several months, Andrea has felt great fear that the cancer could come back. She also feels that she has abandoned her children because she has cancer. She could no longer be there for her children as she would have liked because of the strong side effects of the treatment. From Andrea's point of view, her youngest child in particular would have needed more attention. Andrea's greatest wish was therefore to go to rehab together with at least her two youngest children. Unfortunately, the pension insurance did not want to cover the costs for the older daughter (just under 12 years old). Andrea's rehab was therefore in danger of falling through completely because she could not and did not want to leave her daughter alone at home. 

As part of an objection procedure, “Pro Mater Sano e.V.” was finally able to join in the fight for having at least part of the costs covered by the pension insurance. The remaining part of the rehab costs were financed by the association thanks to our donation. The association was thus able to make sure that the family had a rehabilitation period of 4 weeks altogether. Only recently Andrea got in touch with us and told us full of gratitude that the time in rehab was quite wonderful and healing. She reported that she and her two children had become very close again, that they had all gained a lot of strength and that they had been able to overcome the psychological and physical side effects of the disease together to a certain extent. 

The association “Pro Mater Sano e.V.” will support Andrea and her family with a total of almost 2,500 euros. In addition to enabling her and her children to go to rehab, the financial donation was used, among other things, to finance treatment and therapy costs, medication and to pay (part of) costs of a household help.