FUNDRAISERS HAVE PLANNED an event later this month in an effort to raise money to support a Thornhill family and their sick daughter.

On July 29, Rayna’s Friends will hold a fundraiser at the Miller Tavern, at 3884 Yonge St., for Warren and Nathalie Ostroff whose daughter Rayna Nicole lives    with    infant    Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.

Lucy Rapkin, a neighbour of the family, and Fiona Scott, Nathalie’s best friend, created the organization to raise money and awareness for the Ostroffs, who have both been forced to quit their jobs to care for their daughter.

Rapkin, who hopes to raise about $30,000, said the event is about supporting the family that has united a community.

“Without any effort on their part and unknown to them until recently, they have brought this neighbourhood closer together,” said Rapkin, who has lived across the street from the family for roughly the last three years and described the Ostroffs as friendly and helpful people.

“Our friendship just evolved from the time they moved in.”

The upcoming event, which will feature a silent auction, is the latest of fundraising initiatives that have included a neighbourhood yard sale in May and a car wash and barbecue at a Richmond Hill car dealership last month.

“We needed to do something to help them because there’s nothing we can say that’s going to change anything or make anything any better,” Scott said.

The next step for the Ostroff family is to try to pull enough money together to go to the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, for an antibody currently available only in the United States.

“Certainly that money could support that as well,” Scott said of the upcoming event’s raised funds.

For more information on the Ostroff family and fundraising efforts for the family, visit www.raynasfriends.ca.