A local student from Bristol is running to help cure cancer, and she needs your help.

Alexia Malone Oliver, a doctoral candidate at Simmons College in Boston, is training to run in the Boston Marathon next month, after having been inspired by the Boston Marathon bombing of 2013.

“The day of the Boston Marathon bombing, I made a pact with myself that the year after I graduated from undergraduate school, I would run in the Boston Marathon and support a charity that truly meant something to me,” Ms. Malone Oliver wrote in a flyer promoting the fundraising run.

The bombing was not her only inspiration. While working toward her physical therapy degree, Ms. Malone Oliver did her clinical rotation at South Shore Hospital in South Weymouth, Mass., where she was struck by the motivation and perseverance of patients fighting through cancer diagnoses.

“After experiencing this clinical rotation, I realized, I need to run for all the voices who need to be heard,” she wrote. “I need to run for the patients I worked with in the hospital who never lost faith and always pushed through. I need to run for my grandmother, Rose Malone, who died of cancer when I was younger and I need to run for all the people injured or killed in the Boston Marathon.”

So Ms. Malone Oliver joined the South Shore marathon team, which raises money for cancer research. One of the requirements to being on the team is that each participant must raise $8,000 for the hospital’s cancer research facility. She is half-way to her goal and needs community support to cross the finish line before lining up at the starting line.

To help raise the money, Ms. Oliver has organized a spaghetti dinner at St. Mary’s of the Bay, 645 Main St., Warren, on Friday, March 31, 5-9 p.m. Admission is $15 for adults; $5 for children 10 and younger. The dinner will also include a silent auction and raffle prizes.

“I want to make this event as successful as possible in order to raise money for cancer research,” Ms. Malone Oliver said, noting the patients she encountered at South Shore inspired her to try to make a difference. “It was this motivation that struck me in amazement. The strength, fight, perseverance, and family support each of these patients had, made me work even harder to help as much as I possibly could.”

For more information on the spaghetti dinner, email vs.lone25@yahoo.com or call 401-644-2829. Click here to donate directly to the cause.