VALDOSTA — Like a chance to win a Louis Vuitton purse and ease the lives of local cancer patients?

Partnership Cancer Fund is making this opportunity possible with a Louis Vuitton raffle and other fund-raisers to benefit the locally based organization, say Deborah Smith, Kate Waagner and Katie Hardin of Partnership Cancer Fund.

Partnership Cancer Fund does not go to pay doctor or hospital bills. What the Partnership Cancer Fund does is help pay for some of the other expenses which cancer patients or their families face during the period of treatment.

Such help could include the co-payment of medication which is outside of the regular cancer treatment, supplementing income lost through unemployment caused by cancer treatment, or paying for the costs of trips necessary for treatment in other towns.

The fund was created by Dr. John W. Devine, a board-certified local oncologist who serves the Pearlman Comprehensive Cancer Center, South Georgia Medical Center, and the local American Cancer Society. He is a member of many related boards and is a cancer survivor. He serves as the Partnership Cancer Fund board chairman.

Since its creation in late 2004, the Partnership Cancer Fund has allocated $40,000 to 155 recipients who are either Lowndes County residents being treated for cancer or cancer patients being treated in Lowndes County. Recipients receive a $400 stipend for a three-month period.

The fund hopes to grow and help more people, keeping the money coming in as it goes back out to recipients. The Fund has never had to turn away a qualified recipient.

The organization wants to keep it that way.

The Partnership Cancer Fund is developing a series of fund-raisers to target different demographics. As Waagner, Hardin and Smith note, cancer knows no bounds and almost every person knows someone — a friend, family member, colleague, classmate, etc. — who has faced cancer. So, fund-raising will reach toward different segments of the community.

Given its popularity, the Louis Vuitton purse raffle will attract a certain demographic while other future fund-raisers will likely include a quail supper and a wine-and-cheese event to reach different groups of people.

Local businesses E-Bid in the Castle Park Shopping Center and Hope Thrifts, 2310 U.S. 84 W., are sponsoring charitable campaigns with some of the proceeds going to Partnership Cancer Fund, Hardin says.

Georgia Military College has made Partnership Cancer Fund its community-service project for the spring. GMC students are selling $2 raffle tickets for the chance to win a $130 gas card, which will be given away at an April 19 spring fling, Smith says. GMC students are also selling $1 memorial cards with all proceeds going toward Partnership Cancer Fund.

For the Louis Vuitton purse, valued at approximately $500, an area resident volunteered to purchase the purse for the raffle. Organizers hope to sell at least $10,000 in raffle tickets.