In the middle of her senior year in 1999, as senioritis set in and her classmates soaked up the last of their college years, Samantha Eisenstein Watson '01, who later received an master's degree in business administration from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and now works as an adjunct lecturer teaching "Sociology of Disability," was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer. While her classmates prepared for graduation, 21-year-old Watson took time off from school to undergo extensive chemotherapy and surgery to remove the tumor in her leg.Watson returned to Brandeis in January 2001 after months of therapy and treatment, but she was diagnosed that April with secondary Myelodysplastic syndrome, a precursor to leukemia caused by the treatment she underwent, which destroyed her bone marrow. That summer, just months after her graduation, Watson received a bone marrow transplant.

Through her personal experiences, Watson recognized the hardships young adult cancer survivors face and was inspired to help others in similar situations.

"I met a lot of people along the way, and it seemed like there was so much support while we were going through treatment, and [when] we were done people said, 'OK, now go live your life.' ... And it's just not that way on a practical level. Young adults don't have savings, a job to go back to or a safety net. ... We're starting from scratch with a lot of bills [to pay]," she said.

After attending a conference for young adult survivors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003, Watson and a friend were inspired to help others in the same position and planned to do a fundraiser for their peers. While they searched for an organization which they could donate to that would give direct financial support to young survivors getting back on their feet, they realized that there weren't any at the time.

"So we started one," Watson explained of establishing a new nonprofit organization that is successful and thriving today. "I didn't realize how much it was going to explode."

The ambitious pair solicited professional help to get things started, and 8 years later, Watson is running the SAMFund, short for Surviving and Moving Forward, as the executive director and co-founder of the organization. The SAMFund is a "nonprofit organization created to assist young adult survivors of cancer with a successful transition into their post-treatment life, by providing financial support through the distribution of grants and scholarships," according to its mission statement.

Whether in high school or college, working or searching for a job, on or off their parents' health insurance, the SAMFund helps survivors between the ages of 17 and 35 who are finished with active treatment and struggling to pay a variety of expenses.

"Because our numbers have increased so much over the past few years, we need to focus on those in dire stress," Watson explained of choosing their applicants. "[Such as the applicants who are] only taking their medication half the time and [are] skipping follow-up appointments because they can't afford the cost."

"We used to give undergraduate tuition help, [but] we don't anymore because other organizations do. College is expensive, which we can all relate to. A huge percentage [of people] will have to take out loans, but that's not specific to cancer-it's a boat we're all in at some point. So [we help with things like] medical bills, prescription co-pays, rent and mortgage assistance," Michelle Zeitler '01, program director of the SAMFund who graduated from Brandeis with Watson, said.

With an average of 1,000 applicants per year, the SAMFund carefully chooses its recipients through a lengthy two-part process that first focuses on the applicant's financial situation, followed by a committee of four to five people who review tax and doctor forms, in addition to essays explaining how a grant would help the survivor move forward with their goals.

Fundraising through the Internet, Facebook, networking, events and private donors, the SAMFund is able to provide financial support for approximately 70 lucky applicants each year from their overwhelmingly large applicant pool. "Over the last few years, not only have we given more money, but we're also seeing results from the grants we gave in 2005. The biggest thing for us is that we don't have to explain the needs of [survivors] in our own words. We just tell the stories of our grants recipients," Watson said of the fundraising.

This past year, the SAMFund received $20,000 after winning the Chase Community Giving Challenge, a competition that awards large cash prizes to the 100 charities that receive the most online votes. Since 2005, the SAMFund has given $600,000 to 300 cancer survivors, with the average grant amount being around $1,900.

"We try not to give out too many grants that are tiny. We're really trying to have an impact, so we try to give out fewer grants that are more impactful," Zeitler said. "Just a few months [of support] can help them float so they don't get evicted from their apartment."

Watson and Zeitler have been fortunate to meet more of their recipients over the past few years after starting an Alumni Leadership Council of past recipients who run events and give back to the organization. The organization also offers a network of survivors so that recipients can spend time together in a relaxed social environment.

"We love getting to meet them, it brings the whole thing to life. For the majority [of recipients], we e-mail regularly. We're on the phone regularly, we know their story and they know what we do, and it seems like we know each other well, but getting to meet them in person brings it to a whole other level," Watson said.

This month, Brandeis students, including Watson's students, cancer survivors, and friends and relatives of survivors are working to raise $1,000 during May to donate to the SAMFund. "It's not a cohort you hear about every day. Lifetime movies are about mothers and children. These are also people that have stories and need to be helped," Sara Miller '11, one of the coordinators for the fundraiser and a former student of Watson, said.

"We all have different connections to cancer," Miller said of the group running the fundraiser. "Some of us are survivors, some of us have had parents or close family members [that are survivors] and some of us had friends that are survivors of cancer. That's what's cool about it. We're survivors raising money for other survivors [who are] our peers."

The group raised $100 in one night alone when they put out a last-minute donation box at the Midnight Buffet. In total, since the fundraiser started in the beginning of May, $372 has been raised, and Miller is optimistic that the goal will be met by the end of the month even with students away from school.

"It's a lot easier to check your e-mail and respond to something like that when you're not focused on your final that's in 2 hours. We're hoping once students go home, they'll be able to talk to their families about it so they can help out. . In the first 2 days, we invited 1,000 people to the Facebook event. If they each give a dollar, that's our fundraiser," she said.

While the SAMFund is unable to provide financial support for all of its applicants despite its large number of supporters, the organization recently began a free webinar series called Moving Forward With Your Financial Health to reach more survivors by helping them "increase their financial literacy [and give] them some tools to better their situation," Zeitler said.

"We get a lot of the same stories and challenges faced by people in this demographic. The majority of young adults coming out from treatments face large medical debts and they ask, 'How do I even start?'... We designed this series to address all these questions. We have financial professionals who donate their time to provide [survivors] with resources and ideas to tackle these challenges themselves. We're trying to find cost-effective ways to help more people each year," Watson said.

With a thriving community in northern California and Boston and growing in other cities as well, the SAMFund continues to explore ways to raise more money and reach as many young adult survivors as possible.

"We're always trying to meet the needs of all our applicants. We can only meet the needs of a fraction of our applicants, and we're always working to increase our fundraising to help more folks," Zeitler said.