A 4-year-old Fresh Meadows boy who survived cancer has been named as an ambassador for an annual cancer campaign conducted by Stop & Shop and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK).
Joshy Ford, who beat kidney cancer, will have his face on billboards at Stop & Shop stores as a means to raise money and create awareness of childhood cancer. The campaign, which Joshy is prominently part of, has been running annually for over two decades each March in all Stop & Shop locations. The campaign calls on customers to round up the total of their purchase to the nearest dollar with all proceeds going directly to MSK cancer research.
Joshy’s journey to become part of the campaign has been a tough one. He was just five months old when he was diagnosed with a rare type of kidney cancer that required him to have his left kidney removed. However, the cancer returned soon after and he was treated at the MSK cancer care unit requiring his adrenal glands to be removed.
The 4-year-old is proud to be featured in the campaign, said Joshua Ford, Joshy’s dad.
“Joshy is excited because he knows that he is spreading an important message for all kids with cancer,” Ford said.
Ford and his wife, Vanessa, said that it is a humbling and amazing experience for their son to be chosen as one of the faces for the campaign, adding that Joshy is now two years cancer free.
Ford added that he hopes Joshy can help raise awareness for the many children living with cancer and that he makes it clear that it is not as rare as many may think.
“One of the things we want to eradicate is the word ‘rare.’ You hear that a lot when it comes to pediatric cancer but for Vanessa and I when we were in MSK with Joshy, there were so many other kids there, so the word ‘rare’ doesn’t exist in our world,” he said.
Ford added that Joshy understands the significance of what he is doing, despite his young age, as the family has run an annual toy drive each Christmas since 2021 to make sure the children who can’t leave the hospital during the holidays still get toys.
“We knew that toys were really important in MSK because the nurses would use them to distract the kids when they needed to take blood or run some tests and during the holidays some kids can’t leave the hospital because they are more susceptible to viruses so we wanted to donate toys at an annual toy drive to give back to the hospital,” he said.
Joshy still goes to MSK for post cancer check ups every six months, and Ford says that although they are nerve wracking and there is always that small chance that cancer could return, they are mostly optimistic and hopeful about Joshy’s health in the future.
The Stop & Shop campaign will begin in stores on March 1 and run until March 31.
