West Roxbury’s Anna’s Pals is fundraising for the upcoming Bourne To Run 5K at the Cape on Nov. 7 to raise money for the Beach House.

The Beach House for Immunocompromised Children is Anna’s Pals current project. Located down the Cape in Bourne, the historic Ella F. Hoxie School is being transformed into a therapeutic respite facility that will be aimed at bringing care and a much-needed change of scenery for immunocompromised children.

Those living with conditions that severely inhibit the immune system are subject to severe isolation. Infections of any kind can be fatal, and so the medical advice is to keep patients away from anything that could lead to an infection.

Anna’s Pals founder Kristen Jerome said the idea of the Beach House came from her daughter Anna. Anne was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia when she was 14 years old. She received a bone marrow transplant as part of her treatment and was under severe restrictions, but in 2014, she passed away.

Jerome founded Anna’s Pals in her memory. The Beach House project came from Anna’s love of the beach, and Jerome said bringing children under similar or the same restrictions (as her daughter had) to the beach is the goal of the project.

“As of today, there are camps and other escapes for medically compromised children, but nothing specifically designed for immunocompromised children,” she said. “So the kids we serve can’t go to Camp Sunshine or Hole-In-The-Wall Gang – all those things for sick children, because these kids’ medical needs are so specific these camps can’t meet them. Camp Sunshine is great, but these kids can’t go there because their risk of infection is so high.”

So the Beach House is a clean environment close to the sea (the Cape Cod Canal specifically) and the idea is to allow patrons a break from clean rooms and other such sterile environments (metaphorically speaking).

The Beach House is being designed with a medical-grade filtration system, antibacterial surfaces, touchless fixtures, and mildew-resistant building material. It will also have two pediatric nurses on staff, two admin staff, an indoor recreation facility, and one video game/movie suite.

Jerome said the group recently received a serious chunk of funding in the form of a grant from the Mass Development, and has also received funding from Insight Realty, the Corrib Charitable Trust, Golf Fights Cancer, the Robert and Michelle Goodnow Family Foundation, Parkway Real Estate, Aegon Transamerica Foundation, and the Bourne Community Preservation Committee (CPC).

But more is always needed.

“Through that Mass Development grant we were able to finish the structural planning, and so our architectural designs and engineering will be taken care of by the state,” she said.

Jerome said, however, that there is still a lot of work to do, including asbestos removal in the old school.

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“So we’ll have to do some abatement for that,” she said. “And when that’s done we’ll do the interior demolition, and that’s what we’re working on getting funding for now.”

And so this will be the second year Anna’s Pals has participated in the Bourne To Run 5K.

“Last year was our first race and I was expecting just 50 people or so but we actually had a bit over a 100, which was fabulous,” she said. “The weather was very nice and sunny and it was just a really nice, flat, running route right along the canal.”

The project itself still has a ways to go, but Jerome said she was gratified that the Town of Bourne really stepped up for it, especially as it voted to give Anna’s Pals funds from the Community Preservation Act Fund through the CPC. Funding disbursements like that generally require a vote from a municipality’s Annual Town Meeting to go through.

“It’s important that the neighborhood bought in, and they clearly did,” she said. “The building is an historic school house under historic preservation. So the people in the town are really connected to the building. And they seem really happy that we’re taking a building that was made for children and giving it back to children. So the town is just very supportive of our work.”

But Jerome said it was all worth it, because they really couldn’t build a better site for the Beach House if they wanted to.

“The building is beautiful the way it is, and we’re really lucky. Because of the historic preservation aspect, we’re allowed to change the interior but we have to keep the exterior,” she said. “We’re very fortunate that the building is already basically designed for what we want to do. It has eight classrooms, and we’ll be converting them into eight two-bedroom apartments. So we’ll be able to service eight families at a time. We wouldn’t have been able to design it that way, it just happened to come that way, which is even better.”

To sign up for the race, go to https://www.annaspals.org/bourne-to-run

For more information on Anna’s Pals, go to AnnasPals.org