The American Cancer Society is recruiting teams from businesses, schools, families, places of worship, and more to participate in the Relay For Life of Lawrence County event, which will be from 6 p.m.-midnight June 10 at the Proctorville Fairgrounds. Relay For Life teams are committed to finishing the fight against cancer and raise funds to support the American Cancer Society’s lifesaving mission. Teams and individuals can sign up for the Relay For Life event by visiting www.relayforlife.org or by calling LaChona Ferguson at 740-708-5186.

The Relay For Life program is a community-based event where teams and individuals set up campsites at a school, park or fairground and take turns walking or running around a track or path. Each team has at least one participant on the track at all times. Cancer survivors and caregivers take a celebratory first lap to start each event.

Four million people participated in more than 6,000 events worldwide in 2015. Last year Lawrence County Relay For Life and raised over $47,000 all to support the Society’s mission to finish the fight against cancer once and for all.

What can $47,000 do? Fifty dollars provides five rides to and from treatment for a cancer patient and $47,000 could provide 4,700 rides; $100 provides a breast cancer survivor one-on-one peer support from trained volunteers and $47,000 could provide support to 470 breast cancer survivors; $150 connects a patient to a trained patient navigator and $47,000 could provide 313 patients with a navigator; $500 provides five nights at a Hope Lodge for a patient and a caregiver with the average stay being two to four weeks and $47,000 could provide 470 nights for a cancer patient along with their caregiver. These services are priceless and all thanks to your community and what we are able to provide thanks to all of you.

The Relay For Life movement unites communities across the globe to celebrate people who have battled cancer, remember loved ones lost and take action to finish the fight once and for all. Many participants are our family, friends and neighbors, who have faced cancer themselves. Each new team that registers brings us one step closer to saving more lives.

Please join us in 2016 by forming a team, becoming a sponsor, bringing a survivor, volunteering some time or attending Relay in August. We all truly make a difference.

For more information please contact LaChona Ferguson at 740-708-5186 or LaChona.Ferguson@cancer.org.

For more information in Cabell County please contact Holley Durham, community manager at 304-523-1939 at the American Cancer Society, 611 Seventh Ave., Huntington, WV, 25701.

Cabell County would like to offer local information as well as resources such as wigs. For more information contact Terri Francis, program manager, mission delivery at 304-523-1939.

 

LaChona Ferguson is the community manager for Relay for Life for the East Central Division of the American Cancer Society. She can be reached at (740)-708-5186.