Who We Are

Ms. Sobel’s inspiration for the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation stems from her own staggering loss – that of her teenage son Andre who died of a malignant brain tumor. Within the same year, her husband took his own life. Over the subsequent months of grief, she sought a way to honor their lives. As she reflected, Ms. Sobel realized that through her ordeal, she had never needed to worry about finances or the lack of any other resource.

She had been able to help Andre in every imaginable way. She wondered how she would have managed had financial and emotional support been lacking. Then the question hit her – what might be the plight of mothers without her resources? How could they possibly cope? Ms. Sobel says she experienced an unexpected upwelling of gratitude for her blessings and also a burst of clarity as to what the mission of the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation must be.

Exploring the world of the single care-giver, Ms. Sobel found a place of quiet suffering where mothers staggered from crisis to crisis. They had few advocates. In one case, the request for help was to provide a part time caregiver while the mother went to work. The cost of this would have been $2200. Ms. Sobel asked a mother how much money would allow her to give up work to care full-time for her terminally ill son. The answer? $800 per month. “Just imagine the senselessness of forcing that mother to leave her dying child and go to work, so she can pay a stranger to do what she most wants to do,” reasons Ms. Sobel.

It is Valerie Sobel’s intimate understanding of the stress upon these families that explains the diversity of expenses covered by the ASRL Foundation. From shelter and food to transportation for chemotherapy or alternative therapies, to ballet lessons for a patient’s sibling, and burial costs. Ms. Sobel observes, “Our society is only as humane as its treatment of those so diminished by crisis that they cannot speak for themselves.”

Her work has helped every kind of family, but nearly 70% of households are those where the mother is the sole parent. In the last eight years, the Andre Sobel River of Life Foundation has assisted thousands of families as they struggle with life and death.