NONPROFIT SPOTLIGHT
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Pictured above: Seventeenyear-old honoree Victoria Caetano and Alyssa Carfi, founder of The Brave Minds Project.
22 BC Health, Beauty & Fitness
CONNECTS THOSE WITH BRAIN CONDITIONS
By Stefanie Sears
nspired by her own personal experiences, Alyssa Carfi founded the Brave Minds Project, a nonprofit program intended to provide support systems, form a community and raise awareness for those diagnosed with brain and brain stem conditions. This past June marked Carfi’s 10-year anniversary of her own brainstem surgery. When she was 15, doctors discovered that she had a cavernoma, also known as a cavernous malformation. To describe it in more understandable detail, a cavernoma is a bunch of little blood vessels that resemble grapes lodged in the brain stem. Because it had contact with Carfi’s sixth and seventh cranial nerves, every time it bled, it would cause some kind of distortion in Carfi’s eye and smile. This was first noticed when Carfi