I Heart Celebrity Causes Highlights Aaron Rodgers' Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer

As a society we like our celebrities and tend to support the causes they endorse with this status. Our celebrities are those that entertain and inspire us such as those that act in the movies, on television and the stage, our favorite musicians, athletes from our favorite teams or provide national pride representing at the Olympics, the authors of our favorite literary works and those that provide contributions in the world of art. Each month in this new population-we™ (pop-we) series, I Heart Celebrity Causes, a celebrity will be chosen and the cause that they promote will be looked at.

I Heart Celebrity Causes.

This month is the seventh installment of I Heart Celebrity Causes the focus is on Aaron Rodgers and Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer (MACC) Fund. Rodgers is the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers and was the 2011 MVP. He has also been in a series of State Farm commercials.

The MACC Fund was founded in 1976 and is dedicated to funding childhood cancer and related blood disorder research. In that time the MACC Fund has contributed $52 million to the research in efforts to counter childhood cancer being the leading disease-related cause of death in children after the newborn period. Among those supported by the fund are the Medical College of Wisconsin with $450,000 annually; the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center with $350,000 annually; the MACC Fund Pediatric Cancer Research Wing at UW-Madison with $240.000 annually; and $1.5 million paid to the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin with another $3.5 million pledged.

Each year Rodgers lends himself to the cause by the annual "An Evening with Aaron Rodgers" dinner, which has raised more than $1 million since 2010. Rodgers revealed that early in his collegiate career as a 19-year-old quarter back at Butte College, he had befriended a young man named Daniel who had leukemia. From that experience he vowed one day if given the opportunity and platform he would help all the Daniels out there. The route to establishing that platform included transferring to the University of California-Berkeley in 2003, being drafted in the first round by the Packers in 2005 and sitting as the back up to Brett Favre for three seasons before becoming the starter in 2008.

Rodgers is hand-on by visiting the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin and spending time with children battling the disease. He also featured the cause on his own website at itsaaron.com where he hi-lites multiple philanthropic causes. The first season had its three episodes spotlighting three children touched by the MACC Fund. If you would like to contribute, visit the MACC Fund website.

Most importantly, Bravo to pop-we I Heart Celebrity Causes--Aaron Rodgers--for his MACC Fund efforts!

-population-we™ blog post by John Bohan

© 2015 population-we, LLC 
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