By Pat Loeb

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – Some 500 people participated in Philadelphia’s first “cure search” walk. The walk is a fundraiser for children’s cancer research.

Jared Bender has been through more, at nine-years-old, than many adults ever will go through. Jared is a survivor of Ewing’s sarcoma. Forty years ago, that cancer was a death sentence for the children and teenagers it afflicts.

Now, survival rates are 60 to 80 percent, because of the very research that inspired Jared to join in the one mile walk around Franklin Square on Sunday.

“I hope it raises a lot of money and I also hope a lot of people get better.”

Organizers say children’s cancers get the least research funding, because they are the rarest, but for parents who’ve lost a child, that idea is an abstraction.

Tim Court’s seven-year-old son Christopher died of a brain tumor in October.

“There really is nothing they can do at the moment for brain tumors so, that’s why we’re supporting this and it’s amazing. If we were just asking for donations, I don’t think it would have been the same but because it’s a big event, it’s worked out very well.”