About Us

Our Vision

The vision of the Icla da Silva Foundation is that eventually, every patient suffering from a disease whose only cure is a bone marrow or cord blood transplant, regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status, will have no barriers to receiving their treatment.

Our Mission

The Icla da Silva Foundation saves the lives of patients with diseases whose only cure is a bone marrow or cord blood transplant by providing emotional, logistical, and financial support to remove barriers to treatment.

The Icla da Silva Foundation is enabling more transplants by providing patients with emotional, logistical, and financial support.

Emotional Support

We work with our patients one on one to understand their needs and help them on their journey to a cure. We know what it means to have a loved one suffering from a critical medical condition and we take to our hearts the mission of supporting patients and their families.

Logistical Support

Finding a matching donor is a primary concern for the patients we support. We work with patient families to build recruitment strategies, helping to add more potential donors to the national bone marrow registry.

According to their condition, we also refer patients to treatment centers across the country, ensuring that different medical opinions can be taken into account. Additionally, we help families navigate the confusing medical care system.

Financial Assistance

For patients demonstrating financial need, our IclaCares program provides grants specific to the needs of bone marrow or cord blood transplant patients. We help to cover the cost of transportation, meals, housing/lodging, and other critical expenses that are associated with receiving treatment and transplant. Most insurance companies do not cover these expenses.

Our Story

The Icla da Silva Foundation was established in 1992, in memory of a 13-year-old Brazilian girl named Icla da Silva.

After two years of fighting leukemia, Icla passed away in New York City, where she came hoping to get her life-saving treatment: a bone marrow transplant.

A matching donor was never found.

After she passed, a note was found from Icla to her mom. She insisted that she was fine…and asked her family to help the friends she had made while waiting for a matching donor.

Twelve months after her passing, the Icla da Silva Foundation was formed to help patients in need of a bone marrow or cord blood transplant.

Foundation History

For almost 30 years, the Icla da Silva Foundation recruited potential bone marrow donors to the national registry.

We were a valued partner, and the largest recruitment center for the Be the Match national registry. Our core focus was adding donors from ethnically diverse communities. We are proud to have added 500,000 donors to the marrow registry and helped 1,000 patients receive their life-saving bone marrow transplants.

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We operate across the United States and Puerto Rico, and the Foundation is continuously expanding its efforts in providing assistance and hope to thousands of families in the United States and around the world.

The Icla da Silva Foundation is a nonprofit organization under section 501(c) 3 of the IRS Code.

You can support our efforts to continue helping patients and their families in need of a bone marrow transplant by making a donation.

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