Walk Away From Cancer
Walk Away From Cancer raises $30,000 for local nonprofit Cancer Care Connection
2:20 p.m., Oct. 30, 2015--This year’s Walk Away From Cancer (WAFC), a weeklong friend- and fundraising program hosted by local nonprofit Cancer Care Connection, raised $30,000 and saw participants walk over 21 million steps.
During the week of WAFC, participants wore pedometers to count their steps and received healthy lifestyle messages to keep them motivated.
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The Graduate and MBA Programs office in the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics partnered with UD’s College of Health Sciences to sponsor this year’s WAFC, which also included new features inspired by feedback from UD graduate students generated during the March Case Competition.
This feedback included creation of a new logo, a kickoff event at the beginning of the week to help to get participants excited about the week of activity ahead and prizes for top fundraisers.
"I think it is important for our business students to learn the importance of giving back to the community,” said Jack Baroudi, associate dean for Graduate and MBA Programs in the Lerner College. Working with Cancer Care Connection, he added, was a great opportunity to do so.
“The philanthropic energy from the students was infectious, and it was so exciting to see the University competition double in size from last year,” said Cancer Care Connection cancer resource coach Jessie Hinman.
Hinman said that the over 400 University and community participants’ total number of steps equates to over 10,000 miles walked in just four and a half days.
“What an amazing event we had this year, full of both new and veteran WAFC participants,” Hinman said.
Another addition to this year’s WAFC was Cancer Care Connection's sponsorship of the participation of the 8th grade class at Serviam Girls Academy. Various donors allocated their donations to go towards the direct sponsorship of Serviam students so that they could participate in WAFC.
Cancer Care Connection also visited Serviam twice during the week to talk about cancer prevention, promote healthy life choices and walk with the students.
The event also included participation from community groups like the Gamma Sigma Sigma service sorority, who held fundraisers throughout the week and sold WAFC bracelets on campus.
“We like to think that in a way Walk Away From Cancer not only achieved it's mission to promote the power of prevention, but also created a community of support for individuals who have had family members, friends or co-workers who have battled through cancer,” Hinman said. “We were so inspired and motivated by the messages we received from participants throughout the week about why they were walking and who they were choosing to walk in honor of.”
Hinman added that an additional goal of the event was, “providing the community and University participants with the knowledge and understanding that Cancer Care Connection is a free resource that they can turn to.”
For more information on Cancer Care Connection, click here.
Article by Sunny Rosen