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Friday, August 1, 2025

The Just Because Foundation

by

2508 days ago
20180921
The Joseph Family

The Joseph Family

I am Chevaughn Joseph, Pres­i­dent and Co-Founder of the Just Be­cause Foun­da­tion. How­ev­er, to­day I ad­dress you pri­mar­i­ly in my most im­por­tant role- be­ing a moth­er.

Af­ter sev­er­al years of try­ing, I be­came a moth­er at the age of 32 to a beau­ti­ful ba­by girl RaVen J'Nay Joseph. Hav­ing had a very dif­fi­cult preg­nan­cy and de­liv­ery it was our de­ci­sion not to have any more chil­dren. RaVen was per­fect and ex­act­ly what I had prayed for. Moth­er­hood was great! I loved be­ing a par­ent and be­lieved I was ex­cel­lent at it. When RaVen was 4 we got preg­nant with our 2nd child and our beau­ti­ful ba­by boy Jabez 'JB' Joseph joined our lit­tle fam­i­ly. Feel­ing like a pro and lov­ing every minute of it, it was our de­ci­sion to have a 3rd child when JB turned 4. How­ev­er, six months be­fore his fourth birth­day JB was di­ag­nosed with Alevolar Rhab­domyso­car­co­ma, a rare form of Child­hood Can­cer.

This gut wrench­ing news not on­ly dev­as­tat­ed us as par­ents but our faith as in­di­vid­u­als was al­so chal­lenged and test­ed. Our dreams and hopes for our­selves and for our chil­dren were re­placed with fear and ap­pre­hen­sion.

In­stead of con­tin­u­ing to plan for our third child, we fo­cused on car­ing for JB and do­ing what­ev­er was hu­man­ly pos­si­ble to make him bet­ter. We grate­ful­ly took up an op­por­tu­ni­ty to go to Eng­land for his ma­jor surgery and were lucky enough to ex­pe­ri­ence and learn about many med­ical and sup­port ser­vices for chil­dren with can­cer and their fam­i­lies. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, JB's ill­ness be­came pro­gres­sive­ly worse.

One day in ear­ly March 2007 we went to feed the home­less at Wood­ford Square. JB's body was then rid­dled with can­cer and he had to lie at the back of the car while Noel and RaVen, then nine shared sand­wich­es and juices. He was thrilled to hear the stam­pede of feet and the many voic­es say­ing thank you for such sim­ple meal. Just as they were fin­ished shar­ing he sat up and ex­claimed, “WOW Mom! This is so cool, I want to do this for the rest of my life.”

JB passed 3 weeks af­ter this joy­ous day, on March 24th 2007. He was just five and a half years old at the time of his pass­ing.

In my now 53 years of life, I have nev­er met a more re­mark­able per­son. We as moth­ers or guardians are sup­posed to be the pri­ma­ry teach­ers of our chil­dren but I am hap­py to say that I have learned more from my son JB more than I have learned from any­one else in my life. He taught me un­con­di­tion­al love, com­pas­sion, pa­tience, kind­ness, courage, faith, self­less­ness and the abil­i­ty to smile through the pain-all in the two years of his ill­ness. I learned to at­tend to him, to be brave like him, and to em­brace all of him.

As for my chil­dren: RaVen is now 20 and still ex­act­ly what I prayed for, she has earned an open schol­ar­ship and is study­ing med­i­cine in the UK at Cardiff Uni­ver­si­ty, Wales. JB is my fam­i­ly's guardian an­gel, and though I know he is in a bet­ter place, I long for the day that I can feel his hug, lis­ten to him gig­gling in a near­by room, hear him call my name or hold his hand. I wish for the mo­ment when I can hear him run­ning down a cor­ri­dor call­ing “Mom­my, Mom­my, Mom­my,” and feel him throw him­self at my legs.

As for the 3rd child we nev­er had; God has giv­en us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to care for and be of sup­port to so many chil­dren and their fam­i­lies. It is such a priv­i­lege and I thank God every­day for the as­sign­ment he has hand­ed us though our son Jabez, and for the lega­cy that would touch the lives of so many! Out of our loss and JB's beau­ti­ful soul was born the Just Be­cause Foun­da­tion - The JB Foun­da­tion, just be­cause he cared.

Over the last 11 years we have es­tab­lished the fol­low­ing ini­tia­tives:

The JBF Home Away From Home

The JBF Pe­di­atric Spe­cial­ty Unit

JBF Sib­lings Club

On­co­dads

JBF Em­brace

The JBF Hope Con­cert

The JBF Kid­di K: Chil­dren's Walk Against Child­hood Can­cer

The JBF Birth­day Club

The Wish­ing Well

The JBF No-Smok­ing Tour

All of our ser­vices are pro­vid­ed at no cost to the fam­i­lies of chil­dren with can­cer.

The JBF is an NGO and there­fore de­pends on the gen­er­ous mon­e­tary con­tri­bu­tions from var­i­ous en­ti­ties to en­sure that we can ad­e­quate­ly sup­ply es­sen­tial sup­port in so many ways to chil­dren with can­cer and their fam­i­lies not on­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go but al­so to some chil­dren from around the Caribbean.

To those of you who are cur­rent­ly car­ing for a sick child- May God give you strength, grace and un­der­stand­ing. To the fam­i­lies who may have lost a child, know that we have spe­cial­ly as­signed an­gels who are al­ways look­ing down on us. The pain may nev­er go away but God will give you the strength to go on. To the oth­er moms and guardians, time goes by so quick­ly- make every mo­ment count. Em­brace the hon­or and priv­i­lege that has been be­stowed up­on you. There is no greater bless­ing.

We can't pre­dict the out­come for the chil­dren we sup­port, but to­geth­er we CAN con­tin­ue to make a dif­fer­ence.

In our JBF lo­go we use the Ted­dy Bear, a sym­bol of love, care and com­fort. It epit­o­mizes what we do as we con­tin­ue to nur­ture the chil­dren of the Just Be­cause Foun­da­tion. It is what we should all do on a dai­ly ba­sis whether they are our bi­o­log­i­cal chil­dren or chil­dren in our care. As some­one who has sur­vived what I could de­scribe as a moth­er's worst night­mare, I am hum­bled by the fact that a per­son­al tragedy has turned in­to some­thing ab­solute­ly beau­ti­ful! Though not al­ways easy, God has giv­en us the grace to con­tin­ue day af­ter day.


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