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3,392 People Worldwide Demonstrate that "Sarcoma Knows No Borders" by Bruce D. Shriver, Ph.D.
With one team left to report their number of people who participated in their event and with a few teams revising their final numbers, as of August 15th we can safely say that there were at least 3,392 people who participated worldwide in the 2007 Team Sarcoma Initiative during July 14-22nd. This more than quadruples last year's total of 825 participants!
People participated in a wide variety of events all with the same goal in mind — to raise public awareness of sarcoma. Many of the teams also raised funds to support sarcoma research, clinical trials, and patient and family services. That is an amazing number of people. There were Team Sarcomas in Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and 21 states in the United States, making this truly "An International Sarcoma Awareness Week". The participants on the "core" Team Sarcoma rode and walked through the hills and valleys of the Lake Champlain area of Vermont and were a small microcosm of the overall event, coming from 9 different countries as well as 12 states in the United states and they represented 9 sub-types of sarcoma.
There were Team Sarcoma runs, walks, cycling events, swimming events, sunset strolls, races, bowling tournaments, a skateboarding event, educational talks and seminars, luminaries, recitals of opera arias, and physician consultations that took place in 13 countries and included 15 sarcoma centers/programs and 15 sarcoma advocacy groups as well as over 20 events planned by patients, caregivers, survivors and those who have lost a loved one to sarcoma. Most of the teams had press coverage and several of them had live TV coverage as well. Given some of this TV coverage was in China, Mexico, and the United States, it is safe to say that millions of people who were totally unaware of sarcoma learned something about it. All of these events will be documented on the Team Sarcoma website in the coming weeks with photos and write-ups. For now, check out the 2007 Team Sarcoma Initiative events webpage to see the range and scope of the various events that took place this year. Here is a sample collection of photos of some of the teams. Click on any of the small photos to display a larger version of it and its associated caption. Use the left and right arrows to advance the "film strip" to the left or right.
The "Core" Team in Vermont: 59 participants plus 17 "day-trippers" who joined them along the way. As seen in many of the above photos, thousand of people -- patients, caregivers, survivors, doctors, nurses, friends and families that have lost a loved one to sarcoma — all brandished the "Sarcoma Knows No Borders" bracelets signifying that sarcomas can occur anywhere in the body and they don't discriminate on age, gender, race or nationality.
Most of the work of this Initiative goes on behind the scenes. Some people participated in making the translations of "A Forgotten Cancer" into seven different languages — Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish and Spanish, some helped form one of the 48 teams that are now in place, some took responsibility for the logistics of one of the 56 Team Sarcoma events, some made flyers, some prepared press and media releases, some made packets of materials that were handed out at these events — the list of things that had to be done goes on, seemingly endlessly. But, someone has always been there to do what needs to be done. Everyone who has helped, has made a difference. All have shared the common vision of increasing awareness of sarcoma internationally. Thank you to everyone involved in this Initiative for making it an outstanding success. It is highly likely that the total number of people who participated worldwide in the 2007 Team Sarcoma Initiative will exceed 3,400 when the final counts are in. The challenge stated in A Forgotten Cancer, "Can you imagine our impact if we'd have 10,000?" now seems like a reachable (and aggressive) goal. As we said many times during the 2007 Initiative, together our voices will be louder!
The 2008 Team Sarcoma Initiative will again have the theme "Sarcoma Knows No Borders" and will once again be an internationally coordinated set of events to raise awareness of sarcoma and raise funds for sarcoma research, clinical trials, and patient and family services. It is currently being planned to take place during July 2008, just as the 2007 Team Sarcoma Initiative took place in July 2007. We welcome anyone who is interested in being a part of this "International Sarcoma Awareness Week" and planning a Team Sarcoma event to contact us as soon as possible. It's never too early to begin brainstorming about the type of activity that you might plan.
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