Exactly 7 years ago, the Zoé4life association was created during a small group meeting at Zoé's parents' home in Sullens.
Around the dining room table, six of us were thinking about how to write down what we wanted to do with Zoé4life to form our articles of association.
Natalie and Raphael, parents of Zoé and Lana, Severine, Lana's godmother, François, Zoé's godfather, Jean-Charles, and I, mother of Elliot, who underwent treatment last year at the CHUV at the same time as Zoé.

We wanted to start by curing Zoé by sending her abroad for last-chance treatment, and then continue with the other children, to give them a better chance of recovery.

We had no idea what to expect.
We had no idea that the plan wouldn't work out as we had meticulously planned, and yet we should have. Because with cancer nothing ever goes according to plan, and we knew that.

If we had known, would it have made any difference?
Were we afraid?
Would we have done differently?
Have we given up?

Because if we had known, we could have :

Fear of the enormous amount of work it would generate, fear of the media attention we'd have to deal with in the midst of our emotions and the grief we'd all be going through.

Being tetanized at the idea that we were going to have to speak in public, not knowing how to do it, how to stand, what words to use and what outfits to wear when a room of 400 people has its eyes riveted on you.

Fear of making mistakes, taking the wrong path or not knowing which road to take and wasting our time.

Frightened of success and achievement, as well as criticism, jealousy and malice.

Being scared to death of failure, of not making it and of giving up.

Above all, we could have been afraid of the nightmare that is cancer, a disease that had already struck our two children, Zoé and Elliot.

While we were thinking about the future of the association, Elliot and Zoé were running and playing with Lana in the living room. Zoé's cancer was in relapse, but she was doing well at this stage. There was no reason to believe that exactly 5 months later she would be living out her final hours in a Florida hospital.

No, we weren't afraid, because we didn't know what was in store for us, and we had one thing that was stronger than all those fears, a super-powered weapon that would enable us to stand firm: hope.

It's now seven years later and so much has happened.

Yesterday, due to the coronavirus, I took part in a videoconference meeting with two representatives of the Solving Kids Cancer association, with which Zoé4life is a partner. We were discussing our plans for an international collaboration, through which we and other associations in Europe and America will fund the development of new treatments for pediatric cancer.
We have succeeded in motivating researchers from the world's leading research centers to think about and find new solutions to cure more children. Specifically, we want to tackle neuroblastoma. This cancer, whose cure rate and treatments have evolved very little in recent years, which took Zoé's life in October 2013.

During my videoconference, we discussed how to raise funds during the pandemic, how to make people understand the importance of research, and how to motivate researchers to continue working on this complicated cancer.
We are aware of the mountain ahead. Leona, speaking to me from her home in Belfast, is concerned about several small patients undergoing treatment in her area who were due to leave for the USA for specialist treatment which is only available there. How to get there now, given the pandemic?

Nick, in his home office not far from London, wonders how it's possible that a vaccine against COVID-19 is already being tested on humans, when he's been working for months to advance treatments for childhood cancer at a snail's pace.

Who would have thought, seven years ago, that we'd be here, me, Leona and Nick, with Natalie for whom I'm summarizing the meeting, fighting to save other children?

Because seven years ago, just as Natalie and I, along with the rest of the team, were signing the articles of association to create Zoé4life, Leona's four-year-old son Oscar was finally in remission. He was running and playing, and the parents, exhausted after a year and a half of hard fighting, had new hope for their son. They still had a few weeks to wait before learning of their child's relapse, which would take place less than a year later.

At the same time, Nick and his family were in the USA, where they had just been told that last-chance treatment for 9-year-old Adam had failed. They rushed back to England to have a few more weeks with their child, who was looking forward to summer and the cricket season. Adam died at home a few weeks later.

We knew each other from afar, but we were all fighting our separate battles. I was still so convinced that we were going to succeed in saving Zoé. I just had to look, learn and find THE right treatment that would work this time.
But the cancer moved too fast. Zoé died because the cancer moved faster than the research.

The same was true of Adam, Oscar, and so many other children we've known since.

Today, our battles have come together, but no longer for our children. Adam, Zoé and Oscar are gone. I was lucky: Elliot is fine. He's recovered.
So why stay in this world?
For the same reasons as Natalie, Leona and Nick: we need to make a difference for the children of today and tomorrow.

Because every day, there's still a family sitting in the hospital in front of the doctor who utters the words, "Your child has cancer."

Every three minutes, a child somewhere in the world dies of cancer.

It's hard to accept that in Switzerland, a child dies of cancer every week, but that this is not currently a priority for medical research.

But we keep going, because there's always one thing pushing us forward, compelling us to keep going: hope.

Even if we'd known, we'd have taken the same route, because seven years on, we can look back on what we've achieved thanks to Zoé4life.
Yes, we've already achieved a great deal, and even if we sometimes feel that the scale of the task is as great as ever, we keep going.

We don't give up, our motivation is always unfailing and today, in addition to hope, we have another weapon with us: YOU.
You who are by our side, all of you who support us, accompany us and encourage us.

Thank you, because together, thanks to you, we'll make it happen.

Nicole Scobie, founding member and President of Zoé4life since 2013