Making Strides toward awareness

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk will be held locally for the first time Saturday, Oct. 1.

Making Strides Against Breast Cancer: Sat., Oct. 1, registration 7:30 a.m., event 8 a.m., Wilkes University, all ages. Interested in a team, contact 570.562.9749 or tonyehn.verkitus@cancer.org. Info: cancer.org.

It may not be a proven statistic, but it seems likely that support networks are a key factor when it comes to dealing with something as debilitating as cancer.

That’s why events like the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk are useful not only for raising awareness and money, but also for providing cancer patients and survivors with the encouragement they need. Making Strides is a national event that will be held locally for the first time on Saturday, Oct. 1 at Wilkes University.

Though there are currently about 28 teams slated to walk, single walkers are also invited to join.

“I’m kind of creating a team of individuals this week,” said Tonyehn Verkitus, community income development specialist for the East Central Division of the ACS. “Just letting people know as they register, if I notice that they registered as an individual, come anyway, we will find someone for you to walk with. You will not walk alone.”

Making Strides will be a milestone happening, as the ACS hasn’t done anything like it recently.

“Of course, we have Relay For Life, which is for all cancer patients and survivors and their families,” Verkitus said, “But we wanted to do something special, especially since Breast Cancer Awareness month has become such a huge deal. And also just because 230,000-plus breast cancer patients will be diagnosed this year, so it’s just one of the hugest percentages of cancer in women beyond skin cancer.”

Donations are appreciated but are not a requirement for participating.

“You can register online,” Verkitus said. “And when you do, it will ask you if you want to make a donation right then and there. You can choose to or not, and at that point you just register yourself and show up for the walk.”

The organization has set a goal of $50,000, and one of the notable attributes of the event is that the majority of the money raised will stay local.

“We use most of our money that is raised right in the community,” Verkitus said. “So we’re offering services to people who are facing breast cancer. We have Reach to Recovery, and that’s where a breast cancer survivor will provide one-on-one support to newly diagnosed patients that are within the community. And then we also do Look Good … Feel Better, which is also community based, and it teaches women beauty tips to look and feel better about themselves while they’re going through chemotherapy and radiation treatment.”

Though donations are vitally important to keep services like that alive, Verkitus stressed that this event is as much about promoting awareness as it is about raising money.

“Obviously, I’d always like to have funds,” she said. “But I would love to see 5,000 people out there, in pink, supporting each other and just enjoying a great day.”