Today we’d like to introduce you to Lori Earl.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
When our daughter Esther Grace Earl was 12, she was diagnosed with metastasized papillary thyroid cancer. She had surgery in France, where we were living at the time; six months later, we moved to Quincy so that Esther could receive treatment at Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Esther attended middle school and her freshman year at North Quincy High School before passing away on August 25, 2010, at the age of 16.
This Star Won’t Go Out was established in her memory, and had its beginning in the lime green bracelet she wore. As an avid Nerdfighter and passionate Harry Potter fan, Esther had a robust group of online friends, an engaging YouTube channel, and was involved in causes she cared about, including marriage equality and protesting the violence in Darfur. She met the young adult author John Green, and they became friends. As her illness progressed, Green promoted some of her causes, while wearing her “this star won’t go out” bracelet. When she died, John was inspired to write his novel The Fault in Our Stars, and dedicated it to her. Following her death, sales of those bracelets led to the establishment of the 501c3 nonprofit, This Star Won’t Go Out, TSWGO is committed to supporting families facing childhood cancer, helping to lighten their burden through the giving of financial grants that pay for living expenses like rent, travel and utilities.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When you lose someone you love, the grief is gut wrenching. And it’s tough, because the rest of the world keeps moving on. Eventually you have to decide whether to stay curled up in your bed, or to get up and DO something. My husband threw himself into writing our daughter’s story, and I started a foundation. I knew if we had been so stressed by finances, that other families were facing the same thing.
In 2012, John Green published The Fault in Our Stars, a novel about two teens with cancer who meet in a support group and fall in love. Dedicated to our own Esther Grace, this publicity gave our nonprofit attention, and also led to the publication of Esther’s journals as a memoir, which became a New York Times Bestseller, and won a Goodreads award in 2014. Her book has reached an international audience, and been published in 7 different languages. We get letters each week from young people, telling how her story has impacted and encouraged them. We have continued to do the work we love, and have given away a half million dollars to support families facing childhood cancer.
Last year, we also launched Project LOVEly, a new grant-giving venture from This Star Won’t Go Out which seeks to inspire young people to actions that reflect the “Esther Effect,” instilling hope, creating spaces of awesome, and demonstrating love in their communities.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about This Star Won’t Go Out – what should we know?
While our primary focus continues to be financially assisting families facing childhood cancer, we also recognize that a big piece of what we want to do is inspire and motivate other teens and young adults (which includes anyone who is young at heart!) to strive to make the world a better place. As a Nerdfighter (the name given to the fandom that surround John Green and his brother Hank, focused on their original YouTube blog called Vlogbrothers), Esther lived by the motto to “increase awesome and decrease world suck.” We see ourselves as providing an outlet to practice empathy in a world that too often focuses on “me.”
We love that our funding is extremely grassroots, initiated and organized by caring individuals and groups of young people from all around the globe who want to make a difference for kids. They purchase bracelets and t-shirts that promote TSWGO, and hold fabulously creative fundraisers—individuals and groups have hosted all-night Rock-a-thons, an 84-mile walk around an English wall, carnivals, bake sales, battle-of-the-bands, head-shavings, and even a 5,000-piece domino art project! We also have several chapters of Team Awesome, an athletic team of young people raising funds for TSWGO across the country.
Also, we have an internationally celebrated holiday! Before her 16th birthday, author and friend John Green told Esther that he and his brother Hank would celebrate her August 3rd birthday any way she wished through their YouTube channel Vlogbrothers. After some reflection, Esther decided she wanted it to be a day to celebrate love for family and friends–a day to tells those close to us that we love them, Esther felt that too often we fail to say “I love you” to the people in our lives we actually care about the most. So since August 3rd, 2010, #EstherDay has become a holiday that reminds us to verbalize our love for family and friends and let them know how much they mean to us. Even MTV and Sesame Street twitted about it last year!
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Esther lived a short life–but she lived it well. She was driven to find meaning, even in the midst of a terminal diagnosis with cancer. And she didn’t do it by sharing the public life of her pain, but by digging deep into caring about friends, and loving those who lived within the orb of her life. She wrote about her struggles–and her small steps of success. It is those honest words of an honest life that make her story so vivid. Her life was her book: she didn’t get to pick the ending, but she did get to choose how she filled the pages of her story.
In the same way, we all get to choose daily how we fill the pages of our own stories. It is the desire to help others live lives of meaning and purpose that drives This Star Won’t Go Out to continue its mission to make the world more awesome!
Contact Info:
- Address: 118 Billings Street, Quincy MA 02171
- Website: www.tswgo.org
- Phone: 857-526-1339
- Email: thisstarwontgoout@gmail.com
- Instagram: This Star Won’t Go Out
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TSWGO/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/tswgo
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