The Children’s Health Assistance Program, also known as CHAP, is a club dedicated to helping children with different medical issues cover expensive medical bills.
Each year, the club focuses on supporting a single child and has successfully donated to three children over four years.
The club was founded at Quarry Lane School and expanded to Cal High during the 2022-23 school year.
“In total, [Cal CHAP] raised $11k throughout last year and this year for one kid,” said senior Vaishnavi Gundam, CHAP’s vice president.
In their meetings, the club discusses new medical problems. Usually, the discussion relates to the child for whom they have selected to raise money. Their most effective ways to raise money have been yard sales, selling food, and GoFundMe fundraisers.
Junior Aashi Vasa, CHAP’s secretary, said the club uses checks to send money to Quarry Lane because then the checks can be sent to the family without any issues.
“We use checks a lot because of their flexibility,” Vasa said.
The checks do not support the child for just months, but years, as they can range from $5,000 to $15,000.
“Our goal is not just to raise a little amount of money and give it to them, because medical bills are expensive,” Gundam said. We want it to be long-term, like a one or two-year thing so we can raise enough money to actually support them.”
The CHAP club has also succeeded at hosting school events as well. With 120 members on campus alone, the club has a lot of volunteering opportunities, such as visiting and gifting cards to children at hospitals or making bracelets for the kids.
During CHAP meetings, students discuss and research different health topics. They’ve talked about health policies, COVID-19 vaccines, autism in children, brain tumors, and other health issues. They also provide cards with kind messages to cheer up children in need.
“It’s just seeing that we can help someone in any way, because just donating money is not going to help cope with their issues,” Gundam said.
An example of their work is their recent aid of Roman Perez. When Perez was just three years old, he was diagnosed with leukemia. After being transferred from multiple hospitals, the medical bills started piling up.
Cal’s CHAP club selected Perez as the child they were going to help support and have raised more than $800 to help with his medical bills.
Quarry Lane’s CHAP club has been recognized in a Disney Channel interview, the Colusa Sun Herald, and Yahoo News.
The club has its fair share of problems though as well. Cal High has fundraising limitations, which causes the amount of money they are able to donate to significantly decrease. The club cannot directly send the kids the money, but instead must rely on Quarry Lane to manage the finances.
But Cal’s club has found new independent ways to help kids in need. As an example, they provided children with small Christmas trees and handmade ornaments last December.
The Quarry Lane club advisor has said the CHAP club is actively helping kids in need as well. Quarry Lane is where the club participates with most of its activities.
Senior Siena Dhillon, the current president of Cal’s club, shared her favorite story with one of the kids CHAP has helped since she’s been involved.
“We got him a Bluey toy, and it was nice seeing him happy,” Dhillon said.
They also kept in touch with the boy and their parents on Zoom calls and they often met up to see how the kid was doing.
The CHAP club is looking to expand nationally and is already starting to branch out into universities.
“The whole club is trying to expand, and it is at universities now,” Dhillon said. “We have another CHAP club forming in a couple of months up in Sacramento.”
