Pink Ribbon Day
Wow! So here it is, Pink Ribbon Day… and I’m sitting at home doing assignments so I won’t see anyone selling ribbons or badges or anything else. Obviously there’s opportunity to donate at their site, and they have t-shirts available for purchase too! They don’t have any dandelion ones left in my size. 🙁
There are also many people across the country hosting Pink Ribbon breakfasts.
“The 2007 target is to raise 2.25 million dollars by having approximately 5000 people hosting a pink ribbon breakfast,” explains Ms Murdoch. “But the response this year has been phenomenal and there are already 7800 people registered to host a breakfast…”
That almost brought a tear to my eye. Perhaps it seems silly, but it’s always wonderful when someone’s best expectations are exceeded.
Breast Cancer Risk Calculator
In an effort to dispel myths and misconceptions about Breast Cancer among young women, the National Breast Cancer Centre today launched a risk calculator. It is not meant to allow you to be complacent about checking your breasts by telling you that you live a healthy lifestyle and are at low risk (low risk is still some risk!), but to make you aware of the risk factors of breast cancer that you may be unnecessarily exposing yourself to.
Coalition’s promise
We have a federal election coming up in Australia. You can tell by all the anti-drug adverts on TV (they’re really disgusting, nothing compared to the grim reaper smoking adverts!).
I’ve been umming and ahhing over who I might vote for. I don’t really know a great deal about it, as far as I can see Australia hasn’t been doing too badly under the Howard government (Liberal Party/Coalition), housing prices are too expensive, but the dollar is up against the greenback. I’ve been thinking that I should read up on things before the election gets here.
This morning on the Today show (Mum told me) Jane McGrath mentioned the Coalition’s promise to donate $12million to the McGrath foundation if they’re re-elected. That would fund 30 breast cancer nurses to go out into the country for 3 years.
I’m not sure how I feel about that. Obviously it’s an excellent thing to fund those nurses, medical and emotional support is lacking in the country. On first glance it sounds like they’re buying votes.
On the other hand, if mum hadn’t have seen it on TV I wouldn’t have known about it and I’m not sure many other people would either. Apart from that one news story (I found buried in a Google search) I couldn’t find any reference to it on the Today website, on the McGrath Foundation website or in other Google Searches. It wasn’t in my news headlines this morning… I guess you can’t really sell something to people who don’t know they’re buying it.
So I think that might be one point for the Coalition!
Showing support
Apart from buying a ribbon where you see people selling them, donating to your favourite organisation (Cancer Council, McGrath Foundation, National Breast Cancer Centre, there’s so many!), you can also buy Pink products from the National Breast Cancer Foundation. They have some that they sell year round and some limited October editions.
Some of the links that I’ve included are a bit slow, some aren’t loading, probably due to Pink Ribbon Day. If you can’t connect please try again later!
We must be cautious though, to only buy pink ribbons/donate to reputable organizations, and not just anybody on the streets. That way, we ensure that our contributions go to the correct channels and people.
Indeed, I’m not really a big fan of those guys that stand around with generic buckets saying “Donate to street children” or something like that. It doesn’t seem particularly reliable.
It would be hard to fake selling Pink Ribbons – they make some fairly fancy looking pins.
I agree with Pelf. There are people who will do anything to make a quick buck. Including exploiting good causes.
I’ve seen some cosmetic giants pledging certain percentage of their sales for the cause. That is a great idea.