October is a busy month with the seasons changing, the first holiday in a long time, and it also serves as the awareness month for many organizations. One very prominent awareness is seen through pink clothing and ribbons as breast cancer awareness. Her Campus SAU is sponsoring an event on Thursday night exactly for this reason, and the proceeds are going toward Susan G. Komen for the Cure.
“The promise of Susan G. Komen for the Cure® is to save lives and end breast cancer forever by empowering people, ensuring quality care for all and energizing science to find the cures” (www.komenquadcities.org).
The Susan G. Komen foundation is nation-wide with an affiliate in the Quad Cities, which is where the proceeds from Thursday night’s event will go. This branch was formed in 1990 and has raised over $5 million for breast cancer awareness and the cure. Komen for the Cure proudly uses seventy-five percent of its proceeds locally to help women in the area pay for mammograms and ultrasounds, as well as help raise awareness within the community.
Every summer, The Race for the Cure is held at the iwireless center in Moline, and 25 percent of the money raised goes toward breast cancer research. This is the organization’s largest source of fundraising, and the goal for the 2013 race is 11,000 participants.
The foundation started as a promise from Nancy Brinker to her sister Susan Komen, who was dying of breast cancer to end the fatal disease. The Susan G. Komen foundation was launched in 1982, and has since raised over $1 billion to help fight breast cancer.
One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime according to www.nationalbreastcancer.org. The same site noted that over 220,000 women in the United States will be diagnosed with breast cancer every year, and about 40,000 will die from it. Many students know at least one person who has been diagnosed with breast cancer as it is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women. As a result of this, we hope many students will come to our event on Thursday night and support this cause.
Although we are a small university in a very large country, we can help make a difference in getting closer to finding the cure to breast cancer. One step in this direction is to attend Her Campus SAU’s event on Thursday night with a $2 suggested donation to benefit the Susan G. Komen foundation and bring everyone a little be closer to curing this horrible cancer.
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