The Piscataway High School booster club supported The Marisa Tufaro Foundation during the perennial state power Chiefs’ regular-season varsity football finale against Hillsborough at Ciardi Stadium.
In addition to donating 10 percent of concession sales to our nonprofit, the booster club collected donations during the game for our foundation, whose mission is to help children in need throughout the greater Middlesex County area .
Members of the booster club joined athletics director Rob Harmer to present our foundation’s leadership with a generous check at the high school on Tuesday night.
Our nonprofit has been privileged to benefit from a longstanding relationship with Piscataway Township Public Schools, whose students, their parents, teachers and administrators have supported us in a variety of ways.
Established just over two years ago, The Marisa Tufaro Foundation has already made a profound impact, donating more than $100,000 and spearheading multiple community initiatives to help pediatric patients and other children in need.
Our nonprofit has also donated thousands of toys, nonperishable food items, winter jackets, baby supplies and other items upon which we have placed no monetary value.
In addition, The Marisa Tufaro Foundation awards college scholarship dollars to exceptional high school students who advance the nonprofit’s mission.
Emma Broggi and Gabriel Rodrigues, who graduated from Piscataway High School earlier this year, each received a 2019 Marisa Tufaro Foundation Greater Middlesex Conference Student-Athlete Scholarship.
Mayor Brian C. Wahler and the entire Piscataway Township Council honored Broggi, who is now a freshman at Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, and Rodrigues, who is currently studying at New York University, for receiving scholarships from our foundation during an August township council meeting.
Over the past two years, Piscataway high school student-athletes in a multitude of sports including swimming, bowling, baseball, basketball, football and wrestling, have supported our nonprofit through their participation in conference-wide events of which The Marisa Tufaro Foundation has been a beneficiary.
Piscataway assistant football coach John Thompson, his wife Terri and several of the high school’s gridiron players have volunteered at our nonprofit’s boardwalk-themed Family Fun Night at PSE&G Children’s Specialized Hospital.
Venerable Star Ledger sports writer Mike Kinney, whose wife and three children all graduated from Piscataway High School, said the school district’s remarkable generosity and willingness to give back is a reflection of the entire school community.
“I think it’s a reflection of Piscataway in general, at least as far as my experience here, and I’ve been here for 36 years,” Kinney said. “One of the greatest things that happened to me was meeting my wife and moving here. I came in as an outsider and I found a town that has a huge heart. One of their greatest joys is giving back to the community that raised them.”
Kinney’s wife, Eileen, a 1980 graduate of the high school, and son, Mike Jr., a 2004 Piscataway alumnus, teach kindergarten and history, respectively, at the district’s Knollwood Elementary School and Conackamack Middle School.
A student from Knollwood Elementary School was selected earlier this year as one of six students from five different Middlesex County schools to receive a Marisa Tufaro Foundation scholarship to attend a weeklong summer camp at Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Art Museum.
Last year, as part of its 27th annual Turkey Trot, a one-mile fun run and walk conducted the day before Thanksgiving on school grounds, Conackamack Middle School in Piscataway collected more than 1,300 nonperishable food items for donation to the township’s FISH Hospitality Program in honor of Marisa Tufaro and the tax-exempt nonprofit bearing her name.
Longtime Piscataway football public address announcer Kevin Donahue, a recently retired physical education teacher at Conackamack and former assistant girls basketball coach at the high school, broached the idea of donating the nonperishable collections in Marisa Tufaro’s honor with his teaching partners, Johanna Reid and Justin Strasser.
The Marisa Tufaro Foundation paid Conackamack’s kindness forward, making a donation in honor of the school’s students and staff to the township’s FISH Hospitality Program .
Marisa Tufaro, who would have been a junior this year at Edison High School, was born with hypoplastic left-heart syndrome, a complex cardiac defect which required six open-heart surgeries. Marisa developed two life-threatening conditions that necessitated a heart transplant. The transplant was supposed to extend her life, but tragically cut it short when a postoperative complication developed into a rare form of blood cancer to which Marisa succumbed in 2017 at the age of 13.
Despite being hospitalized for more than two years and maintaining hundreds of doctor’s appointments, Marisa, who was an honor roll student in elementary and middle school, lived a vibrant life that inspired.
Marisa’s late aunt, Kay Milo, was an art teacher at Piscataway’s Thoedore Schor Middle School.
Some of the ways our nonprofit has made an impact are detailed below:
- Sponsored more than 60 student-athletes from South Brunswick High School, who are donating their time and youthful energy to participate in a charity kickball tournament benefiting an inspirational township boy living with an incurable and terminal disease.
- Established a fund at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, from which Marisa received outstanding care for her entire life, to provide financial support to families of pediatric patients from Middlesex County in medical crisis by helping to pay medical, personal or incidental expenses.
- Partnered with the Middlesex County Association of School Administrators to offer financial relief to parents of children in medical crisis who lost wages while caring for their child at the hospital, who lack health insurance or whose provider won’t cover certain medical expenses.
- Donated to Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital’s newly established extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) program, a specialized cardiac and respiratory support system that saved Marisa’s life at another medical facility following her heart transplant.
- Conducted a boardwalk-themed Family Fun Night for consecutive years at PSE&G Children’s Specialized Hospital, where the sights, sounds and smells of the Jersey Shore were brought to patients and their families through carnival games, food, prizes, music and more.
- Partnered with Teamwork Unlimited Foundation to treat Special Olympics athletes from the Raritan Bay Area YMCA to a Somerset Patriots game experience.
- Funded the purchase of brand-new metal bunk beds for campers at Kiddie Keep Well Camp, which serves more than 600 underserved Middlesex County children annually.
- Partnered with the St. Joseph High School football program to pack and donate more than 100 “Weekend Snack Bags” for pediatric patients’ families at PSE&G Children’s Specialized Hospital in New Brunswick.
- Partnered with Old Bridge and South Brunswick high schools to collect thousands of toys for pediatric patients at Saint Peter’s University Children’s Hospital and Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital.
- Partnered with the Kittim N. Sherrod Foundation to provide a youth football and cheerleading organization with a bilingual state-of-the art automated external defibrillator, as well as AED and cardiopulmonary resuscitation training for adult members of the organization.
- Supported instruction and supplies for an art therapy program at Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital, to which our foundation also provided funds for infant mobiles and toy cars staff use to transport children to the operating room for surgery.
- Provided money for equipment and supplies for students with disabilities who utilize the Lakeview School’s newly constructed aquatics center.
- Partnered with Teamwork Unlimited Foundation to provide medical alert bracelets to children with autism and pediatric patients with chronic illness who receive outstanding care from Children’s Specialized Hospital, which annually serves more than 34,000 children statewide.
- Partially funded the Make-A-Wish of a Middlesex County boy who is winning a battle with high-risk neuroblastoma to vacation with his family at Walt Disney World.
- Provided physical therapy at Special Strides Therapeutic Riding Center and Project Walk for Middlesex County children whose families do not have health insurance or whose families’ health insurer does not cover the cost of the physical therapy.
- Partnered with Edison High School and the Chamberlain College of Nursing for two consecutive years to raise money and collect nonperishable food items to benefit Middlesex County children and their families through Hands of Hope via our foundation’s participation in the Race to Outrun Hunger.
- Provided new iPads and gaming system accessories (Xbox and PS4 games, controllers, chargers) for adolescent patients at Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital.
- Funded the purchase of uniforms (shirts and shorts) for campers at Kiddie Keep Well Camp, which serves more than 600 underserved Middlesex County children annually.
- Partnered with Woodbridge High School and the Central Jersey bowling community to deliver hundreds of toys to pediatric patients at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital, where Marisa underwent a successful heart transplant.
- Partially funded the Make-A-Wish of a Middlesex County girl who was born with a complex cardiac defect to vacation with her family at Walt Disney World.
- Provided 13 summer art camp scholarships to Rutgers University’s Zimmerli Art Museum for Middlesex County elementary and middle school students.
- Rewarded three high school students for their community service to children with college academic scholarships.
- Provided a total of 14 college academic scholarships to Greater Middlesex Conference student-athletes whose classroom performance and extracurricular involvement reflects Marisa’s educational success and whose charitable endeavors align with our foundation’s mission.
- Sponsored a Middlesex County elementary school’s field trip to Special Strides Therapeutic Riding Center in Monroe, where students from self-contained autistic classes were afforded the opportunity to interact with horses and baby goats.
- As a way of giving back to the Rutgers University baseball program, whose roster features several players that have supported our nonprofit, our foundation matched the Scarlet Knights’ fundraising efforts with a donation to Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospital’s child life program.
- Made a donation in honor of Piscataway’s Conackamack Middle School, which honored Marisa during its 27th annual Turkey Trot, to the township’s FISH Hospitality Program, which provides shelter, meals, clothing and other services to homeless families in Middlesex County.
- Paid forward the generosity Bishop Ahr High School has bestowed upon our foundation with a donation to the school-community’s 21st annual Ahr Star spaghetti dinner, whose beneficiaries included a 9-year-old boy from Middlesex County with multiple disabilities.
- Provided James Monroe Elementary School students with food items to fill a hundred “Weekend Snack Bags” for pediatric patients’ families.
- Provided meals and goods for families staying at the Ronald McDonald House of Central Jersey.
- Partnered with Middlesex High School to conduct a coat drive for Middlesex County children.
- Provided gift cards for pediatric patients and their families.