A Sponge, A Bucket, and a Vision: How One Teen Is Redefining What Advocacy Looks Like
When most sixteen-year-olds think about weekends, they think about sports, hanging out with friends, or maybe catching up on sleep. For Michael-Christopher Suman , weekends meant rolling up his sleeves, filling a bucket with soapy water, and washing cars in his family’s Chicago driveway — not to earn pocket money, but to make a difference. Michael-Christopher’s mother lives with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) , a rare and often misunderstood immune disorder that can cause life-threatening allergic reactions and chronic inflammation. Watching her navigate a condition that few doctors even recognized opened his eyes to a bigger issue: invisibility. Patients like his mother were not only fighting their symptoms, but also a world that didn’t know they existed. That’s when Detailing for MCAS was born. What started as a single act of love — a son raising money for research by detailing cars — evolved into a youth-led nonprofit spanning 13 countries and thre...