About 60 students are looking to make the holidays a little better for Tucsonans suffering from cancer.

Over the next few weeks, Youth Against Cancer club members will deliver care packages to chemotherapy patients in hospitals and meet with people who've lost family members and friends to the disease.

"My favorite thing to do is visit patients over the holidays and give them presents. It just brightens up their day a little," said theatre arts sophomore Christine Nelson.

YAC members volunteer year-round at the Arizona Cancer Center, Northwest Cancer Center and the American Cancer Society.

"We go (to the Arizona Cancer Center) and bring candy, cards, or talk to patients who are getting their therapy," said business management junior and club member David Tobias. "People start crying sometimes because they are so happy that we come in · just having somebody come by and smile and tell them that there is somebody out there that cares about them."

The group is formed and founded by students who've been affected by cancer, and a few pre-medicine students. Business administration and marketing junior Kristy McKay lost her mother to liver, bone and breast cancer last summer. She searched for a support group on campus, but found nothing.

So she started her own group.

"I was trying to reach out to a pretty large group of people who are trying to deal with this (cancer)," McKay said.

McKay founded the club to help students struggling with their illness or illness in their families, help people affected by cancer, promote cancer awareness and offer students a way to help battle cancer.

"My grandfather passed away from cancer," said Tobias, who is also the club's vice president of public relations. "A lot of people in the club had personal losses in their families and everybody kind of understands and there is definitely some kind of support system in the club ... "

"The club as a whole is a support group for people who have family members or friends with cancer. Just learning about cancer helps ease the pain and the worry for somebody who has family or friends with cancer," Nelson said.

Nelson's ex-boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer last summer. She's had two family members who have died of the disease.

The group meets every other week for about an hour for a combination therapy session and discussion about upcoming volunteer projects, said YAC president Joanna Lieberman.

To find further information about YAC, go to http://www.youthagainstcancer.org.