Nonprofit of the Year
Me Fine Foundation
Me Fine Foundation helps families in crisis By Randy Capps
A couple of words from a 2-year-old battling AML leukemia and his mother’s desire to ease the burden of families facing the same challenges led to the start of the Me Fine Foundation. “Me Fine!” was Folden Lee IV’s response when anyone asked him how he was doing during his treatments, and his mother, Lori Lee, started the foundation in honor of her son’s memory in September 2004. Me Fine has touched countless lives since then, earning it the 2020 Johnston Now Honors award for Nonprofit of the Year. “She would meet a lot of 24 | JOHNSTON NOW
different families that were going through their own different medical crises,” Joey Powell, executive director of the Me Fine Foundation, said. “The thing about leukemia is, if you get a bone marrow transplant, like a lot of invasive pediatric conditions, your treatment requires you to be inpatient at a hospital for an extended period of time. Most of the time, for a pediatric bone marrow transplant, you’re looking at between six and nine months. Folden went through that a couple of times. But while you’re in these units, you’re meeting families and you’re living beside them. Because you can’t have a child in a pediatric isolated unit without a parent having to be
there all the time. So, you’re looking at families who are giving up everything because they’ve got to get their kid well. “She just felt like that’s not OK. Like hearing about a family losing their house because they can’t afford to make their payments. Because their kid is sick? In what world is that just?” While the reach and scope of Me Fine has grown beyond its roots in Princeton, the basic mission is the same. “We’ve evolved tremendously over our 16 years, but it started with her wanting to make sure families weren’t getting kicked out of their houses. We’re still
responding to what families need. We still help pay bills. That’s primarily our focus now, to help families pay for the cost of being treated. “There are two ways to look at a child’s medical crisis: There’s a cost of treatment. That’s your medical bill, doctors, treatments whatever. Then, there’s the cost of being treated. That’s everything else that changes and amasses because your child is sick, or because your child is dealing with a major trauma. And we pay those life expenses so families can try to maintain some focus and maintain some time with their kid. While the diagnosis is the great equalizer, one thing we can do is allow these families a chance to be
