09/20/2026
It began like many other conversations that Volunteer Chance Bonfanti has with patients and families. Wheeling a cart filled with art supplies around clinical floors, Chance offered some to a man and his husband who was receiving treatment.
The patient, it turned out, was an artist, and his husband began describing his pieces to Chance. “He did it with such tenderness, pride, and detail that I felt I could picture the pieces, even though I had never seen them,” Chance recalls.
In passing, the man mentioned that they had been together for 25 years. Chance – who was just 18 at the time – was floored.
“I remember just sitting with that,” says Chance, now 20. “Twenty-five years of love, showing up for each other, and carrying each other through everything, including this.”
Chance joked that they’d be a perfect fit for “couple goals,” and they laughed. “For a moment, a weight was lifted.”
When Chance stood up to leave, the couple thanked him for talking. “In my mind, I had done so little,” he says. “To them, it clearly meant a great deal, and truthfully, it meant something to me too.”
The interaction affirmed why he began volunteering. “It was the product of an institution that has made a conscious decision to be more than just a place of medicine,” Chance explains. “Dana-Farber is a place where everyone can feel comfortable bringing their whole selves.”
Chance began volunteering after seeing a family member go through cancer treatment. “I felt this pull toward wanting to be part of something that was fighting back against the thing that was hurting someone I love,” he says.
He signed up for the Junior Volunteer Program, which gives high school students the opportunity to greet patients, help them navigate the Institute, and hand out art supplies and lunches to patients. Almost immediately after joining, Chance says “something shifted.” Throughout his childhood and teenage years, he “carried this quiet feeling that I was different from everyone around me. I could not always explain it, but it followed me.”
He felt a level of acceptance here that allowed him to understand where those feelings came from. His q***r identity was mostly a secret at that point, and he often felt distant from his peers. That feeling disappeared at Dana-Farber.
“I felt a sense of warmth, community, and belonging that I had not experienced before,” he says. “What struck me most was that nobody went out of their way to make me feel included. It was simply the culture here.”
As he made his way around Dana-Farber, he saw that culture of acceptance everywhere. It inspired him to share his story during our annual Pride flag raising in June.
“As we raise this flag, I hope we think about what it stands for,” he told the crowd. “The courage to be fully yourself, and the responsibility we share to make room for others to do the same. Every patient belongs here.”
That vision motivates Chance as he enters his second year at Harvard University where he is studying neuroscience with the hopes of becoming a physician. Over the years, he’s become a mentor to other student volunteers and completed an internship at Volunteer Services, helping to expand the department’s offerings and building online resources for patients. He continues to volunteer every week, grateful for the opportunity to be present with someone, hopefully helping them feel a little less alone.
“These experiences have made me certain of the kind of physician I want to be – a doctor who listens, not just to symptoms but to people, and who understands that every patient is carrying a whole life with them that deserves to be honored,” Chance says. “Dana-Farber is where I learned that, and I will carry it with me into medical school and beyond. This place has become a part of who I am.”
