Young Adult Cancer Canada - Organization - Blog

2nd Annual Ball Hockey Tourney

2009-10-21T14:13:19Z

On Saturday, September 26th, young adult cancer supporter and this organization’s buddy, Lisa Bélanger, along with her friend Desi Fuhr, put off the 2nd Annual Young Adult Cancer Survivors (YACS) Ball Hockey Tournament in support of young adults with cancer!

The event was held at a community rink outside Edmonton, AB and, with 6 teams and some tasty BBQ, proved to be super fun and GREAT ball hockey! With last year’s tourney under their belts, YACS learned a lot from the experience and ramped up the excitement and doubled the participation for round two. An AWESOME $900+ was raised at the event and they expect next year to be even bigger and better!

All proceeds were donated to Young Adult Cancer Canada’s (YACC) Retreat Yourself West Initiative which was held this year for the first time outside Vancouver, BC from Sept. 3-Sept. 7, 2009. This was the first year YACC was able to provide two Retreats, East and West, and in fact Lisa was one of the reasons we did this!

On behalf of all of us here at Young Adult Cancer Canada, I’d like to send a shout out to Lisa and her awesome group for supporting young adults with this tourney. You’ve got such initiative and we really appreciate all your hard work.

A Friend Shares her Connection

2009-10-14T14:02:36Z

Cathy Murphy is one of our loyal supporters from TD Canada Trust. Knowing that people usually have a strong connection to the causes they support, I asked Cathy where her connection to Young Adult Cancer Canada originated. Here is what she said:

For me - I am very much connected to cancer, having lost a very precious sister to the “C” word. I knew I always wanted to be up close and personal, and involved in the cause but hadn’t found the group that I wanted to devote my time and energy to, so here’s how I became involved with Young Adult Cancer Canada…

I have an 18 year old son, Chad, who, back in Grade 7 (2004), had to write a paper for school about a guest he would invite to Thanksgiving Dinner. The assignment read, “You have just been told you can invite ANYONE (living or dead) to your house as your guest for Thanksgiving Dinner.”

Initially, he wanted to invite a hockey player. I suggested he research and try to find a local hero - he picked Geoff Eaton (who is also a huge hockey fan). The paper was wonderful, very heartwarming, and he got top marks. From that moment, I always felt connected to Geoff, even though I had never met him.

Some years later in 2006, Geoff had a friend who works for TD Canada Trust in PEI, and Geoff had asked his friend to help him look for some sponsorship from TD Canada Trust on a local level. An email came in to the Newfoundland TD Canada Trust team to see if one of us could connect with Geoff. Well, within 2 minutes, I answered the email to offer my services both from an individual perspective, and as well as working on their behalf to get some support at the corporate level. I then went to my peers to get as many of them involved as possible. Carson Chafe, another TD Canada Trust manager, also jumped on board.

Our TD Canada Trust Team have been extremely successful in building support for YACC, in particular with their annual golf tournaments and, most recently, for the 2009 Shave for the Brave event. I truly love my connection and relationship with YACC. It also makes me proud to know that my employer (TD Canada Trust) has supported, what’s important to me. My son is now also a volunteer for YACC, and I know this has made him a much better human being. I so respect Geoff Eaton’s desire to take his illness, and devote the rest of his life to raising awareness and helping “young Canadians” deal with this dreaded disease that touches so many.

I would like to end with this quote: “Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves” (James Matthew Barrie, Author of Peter Pan). I know this is true in my case, and I truly see it works for Geoff Eaton. It’s amazing to watch his passion for this cause!!!

Running for a Cure…

2009-10-09T14:25:04Z

This past Sunday (October 4th) , I was one of the many thousands of individuals who participated in the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation Run for the Cure. Like so many others, I have a personal connection to the cause as my mother is a breast cancer survivor. I am proud to report that my mother is an example of how early detection can really change outcomes. She found her cancer early, had surgery and chemotherapy and, three years later, is doing great largely due to her early detection and her wonderfully positive attitude.

The run brought a number of different worlds together for me, with my family connection being just one of them. One of the speakers was a 32 year old breast cancer survivor who talked about her own battle, and how she felt a lack of connection with her same age peers as they were not dealing with chemotherapy, hair loss, and the many other issues that cancer presents. This perspective mirrors what I have learned since I started here at Young Adult Cancer Canada, specifically how the cancer experience is so different for young adults, and isolation is prominent. So despite the type of cancer, for many young adults - the feelings are definitely the same.

I found it very inspirational and moving to see the answers to the question ‘Who are you running for?’ pinned to everyone’s jackets and sweatshirts (it was cold!!). They ranged from the very personal (i.e. my mother, my sister, my daughter, myself or a specific person’s name) to the generic, yet no less powerful (i.e. You, Women Everywhere). It really shows that everyone has a story – some are sad, some are happy, but the feeling of love and support present were undeniable.

Cancer is preventable, treatable, curable…

2009-10-02T13:49:18Z

Like mentioned in my previous blog, the Go Public conference got me thinking…here are some of my thoughts.

Preventable: How can we prevent the cancers that are preventable?
Eating healthy food, exercising regularly, reducing our level of stress, avoiding cigarettes and alcohol, plus a long list of environmental factors over which we don’t always have control…anything new here? We (society, individual, world) all seem to know what to do, but don’t always do it. What’s up with that? Not sure exactly. Part of what public health focus on is to understand behaviors in order to change them. We could ban everything that is bad for us, but I am not sure this would automatically make us adopt healthier lifestyles…It seems everything can “give” us cancer, so where should we put our priorities, and what should we focus on if we want to take part in the change? Who should we put pressure on?

Have a clear message and empower people
One of the conclusions of this Go Public Forum was that the cancer world needs to create a movement- it needs its own “Greenpeace” activist group to be in the face of the right people, to create waves, and to channel the anger of the general population. Great idea, but who can do it? Most participants at the conference seem to think the younger people (12-30ish) were the ones with the power. As mentioned by Steve Hildebrand, the generation of the ongoing conversation (Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, email, messenger, text messages, etc.) should be in charge.

Okay, let’s say we buy into this, then we also need to be coherent. For a generation to be strong and influential, it needs to be healthy. I agree with the idea that young people can make a difference, and I believe that young adult cancer survivors can have an even bigger impact if we give them the opportunity.
To me, that just reinforces the need to put some focus on the young adult population. All of them who are living with cancer need proper care, sufficient and relevant support, access to clinical trials, they also need to be heard when they go see a doctor and say something is wrong, they need attention if they want to be part of the big mission to control cancer.

Hildebrand said we will solve problems best if we do it together. I completely agree with that statement. In other words, the power resides in the community and starts within ourselves.
I am not sure where we need to start and what we need to do. Does writing this count?

Go Public!

2009-10-02T13:33:09Z

From September 23-26, 2009 I attended the Go Public, Global Leadership Forum for Cancer Control in Ottawa. Canada’s Campaign to Control Cancer, together with its international Steering Committee, issued a global call to action: the urgent need to ‘Go Public’ when it comes to cancer. They felt the time was right to create a new social climate about cancer control: one that engages the public in support of a new global response to cancer. A big mandate for a 3 day meeting, but I have to say I left with more knowledge than I came with, which is not always a guarantee when you attend a conference.

Powerful speakers
I got to attend interesting workshops, but mostly, I got to listen to inspiring speakers. People like Steve Hildebrand, Deputy Campaign Manager of the Barack Obama Presidential Campaign; Wendy Mesley, Cancer survivor and Award-Winning Broadcast Journalist for CBC; and Stephen Lewis, Professor in Global Health and Former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa; just to name a few, shared their thoughts on cancer control. One thing that came out of the various speeches is that cancer is preventable in a high percentage (they were not clear on the exact percentage though…40%, 60%, 95%). To me, the important message here is “preventable”. I have more to say about this, so check my next blog…

Network
Of course conferences like that also provide us with the opportunity to network and also learn from our colleagues and supporters. I was invited to do a presentation about YACC. My co-presenter was Pat Taylor, mother of Sara Taylor, a young adult with cancer who passed away in 2000; after working on significant projects with her mom to help raise awareness surrounding young adults with cancer. Pat presented a short portion of her movie Chasing
Rainbows: Young Adults Living With Cancer which talks about issues young adults face. We then discussed with the participants about the young adults’ reality, and what we can do to change it. These exchanges reinforce our partnership with people everywhere who have been affected by cancer. These individuals give us energy and new ideas as we move forward.

I will stay tuned to any new developments of Go Public, but I feel the noise made by cancer fighters will be much louder in the coming years and it’s well over-dew.

New Young Adult Support Group in Toronto – Ilymphoma!

2009-09-15T11:44:32Z

I received another interesting (and exciting!) email from a survivor in our family the other day about another newly formed young adult support group in Toronto.

The group is called Ilymphoma and it is a support group founded by 4 young adult lymphoma survivors who met while being treated at Princess Margaret Hospital. The group is a peer-run support group for young people diagnosed with lymphoma. They are based in downtown Toronto, but they service those in the entire GTA and surrounding regions. The goal of the group is to connect people with others who have been diagnosed, to help them see they are not alone. They aim to provide a supportive environment, which fosters healthy exploration of the issues unique to young people who have been diagnosed with lymphoma.

The group had their first official meeting in August and opened the meeting up to others for their second meeting last week.

The group meets at 7pm on the second Thursday of every month (next month’s meeting (Oct.) is scheduled for Oct 1st as the lymphoma Light the Night Walk is on October 8th) at Princess Margaret Hospital on the 18th floor in the Pencer Centre. The website address is http://www.ilymphoma.ca/.

It is so great to hear about, and to help promote, these young adult focused programs!

Good luck to this new group!

Young Adult Support Groups in Toronto and Nova Scotia!

2009-09-10T13:21:35Z

While I was away ‘retreating myself’ at our most recent young adult event I received two very encouraging emails:

1. From Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto.
2. Cancer Patient Family Network (Nova Scotia).

Each group is offering young adult support group programs – which is so great to see! I think it is awesome that there are other resources out there for young adult cancer patients and survivors. We all know that cancer for young adults is a different experience than any other age group. Issues such as dating & sex, fertility, education, finances, career, independence, etc. are different when you are 26 vs. 66. These groups will help young adults connect and share in their experiences.

Toronto: Gilda’s Club:
Gilda’s Club is running an I-Connect Networking Group, for young adults in their 20s & 30’s living with cancer.
This group meets every last Thursday of the month from 6:30 to 8:30pm in the clubhouse.

For more information connect with Athanas Nijeru, Manager, Adult Programs, Gilda’s Club Greater Toronto (110 Lombard Street, Toronto), Telephone: 416-214-9898 or email:

Nova Scotia: Cancer Patient Family Network:
Nova Scotia’s Cancer patient Family Network is running several support groups in the fall, but two are specifically for young adults. Both are offered online to anyone in Nova Scotia. One is for Young Women with Breast Cancer (up to age 45) and the other is a general Young Adults group (up to age 30)

For more information on the online groups, or other programs, please contact Dr. Deborah McLeod @ 473-2964.

Bravo to both organizations for putting a focus on young adult cancer patients/survivors!

YACC Goes Green!

2009-09-03T14:45:16Z

If you are connected with us, you likely already know that we’ve started a new initiative here at YACC, an electronic newsletter. Up To Here is a monthly update that tells you what’s happening with YACC and the young adult cancer community in Canada sent right to your inbox. (If you haven’t heard about it yet, sign up!) Up To Here replaces our quarterly printed newsletter and allows more of our funds to go directly to the young adult support programs we offer.

This is only one of the recent efforts we are making internally at YACC in order to reduce paper usage and become more efficient. We have also begun sending out electronic tax receipts for your donations… when an email address is provided! So we need your help. If you have donated to us in the past or think you might in the future, we encourage you to contact us and let us know your email address. I promise you, it will be as good as making another donation, but without having to pull out the checkbook!

The more we can communicate with you through email, the better. Not only will WE save time and paper, making us better able to focus our efforts on young adults with cancer, but YOU will also start to see the benefits. Your tax receipts will come much quicker than usual, you’ll be informed of YACC news and special events through Up To Here (if you wish to be) without having to visit our site every other day - don’t get me wrong, we’d LOVE for you to visit our site every other day, and you’ll have the knowledge that you’re helping us and the young adults we serve by taking your support to another level.

So please consider calling or your electronic address to us TODAY to show your support and help us to become more green!

Improving YACC’s Customer Service

2009-09-01T18:53:19Z

Have you ever called an organization to get information on one of their biggest events or programs and the person on the phone couldn’t help you? Did you ever feel this is very strange? Like going to the drive thru at Mac Donald’s and having to go through three people just to order a Big Mac!?!

Well, we realized a little while ago that the same situation could happen here… Being a national charity with limited resources (there are seven of us in the office) we are sometimes focused so hard on our own ‘department’ that we get stuck. The phone will ring, a survivor will be on the other end looking for information on Retreat Yourself, and I may not be able to answer the question.
While this is bound to happen, as I am no longer the Program Director and no longer know all of the intricate details that Karine is immersed with, I should at least be able to tell you the date; location; criteria; etc.

So we are trying to implement a new ‘process’ here at YACC. Before each event is launched, the individual responsible for the event is to write up a simple “Internal FAQ” for all of the office staff.
Now I am not promising that I will be able to answer every question you may throw my way… but I am saying that we are taking a pro-active approach to this and hopefully we will be able to answer the basics.

We are growing… with that comes ‘growing pains’ (any Kirk Cameron fans out there??) but we are trying and with customer service as a major focus, hopefully your experiences with us will continue to improve.

Wedding Donations - a no brainer!

2009-09-01T17:37:22Z

I am getting married in less than three weeks (17 days to be exact!)… With my best friend’s wedding this past weekend, and a wonderful retreat full of young adult survivors and supporters to attend this week in Vancouver (aka Retreat Yourself West) the big day is fast approaching!

When I think about it, I realize that there are some things that are not done..and there are some things that will never get done, but the most important things have been taken care of. We have a judge, a reception hall and a band; so worst comes to worst… we will get married, eat and dance. That is the main thing… and really, that isn’t bad at all!

Of all the ‘decisions’ that had to be made in the course of this year, the gift to our guests was the easiest. I have attended many weddings where the bride and groom gave their guests, beautiful and well thought-out gifts. Most of these gifts were very personal - I once received a tree to plant from a forestry student, and even my best friend gave candy apples; she is a teacher, so this spoke very close to her heart. This was what I wanted… to share with my guests something that was close to me and my husband-to-be (Ken).

So the decision was easy. We decided to share with our guests a huge part of our life, it is a gift that was given to me almost three years ago now - the gift of Young Adult Cancer Canada. I have been truly blessed to be working in such a rewarding and life changing job for the past three years that I wanted to share it with those that are special to us. So Ken and I decided that we would make a donation to Young Adult Cancer Canada on behalf of our guests.

Being the current Managing Director and the past Director of Programs, I know exactly where the money goes. . It goes to help young adults dealing with cancer. It connects them to valuable support and inspiration to help them in their journey.

All of this to say… I am about to take part in one of the biggest days of my life and I am so happy to share it with a very important thing in my life – you; the young adults out there in our family.

Developing on the web

2009-08-28T22:00:52Z

I wear the hat of a web-developer/designer at Young Adult Cancer Canada (YACC in the office). And while I fill both roles: I’m truly a more capable web-designer than web-developer. I can put together a full CMS in PHP/MySQL, I can configure an Apache server, but I am more at home creating text-styles with CSS and images in PhotoShop, than I am scripting functionality.

So; when we started building this new website, I looked to an off-the-shelf CMS to provide the core functionality for the site. I’ve used WordPress, MovableType, and a few more obscure publishing engines in the past: but this time I pushed to try ExpressionEngine. It’s commercial software- so it actually costs money, but, in terms of savings in HR time and in terms of support it’s paid for itself many many times over.

I remember the first few times I tried to skin a site with WordPress: it was an absolute nightmare. Quite literally days spend staring at confusing markup trying to figure out how to use it. I’m sure it can be done faster… with experience, I’m sure I could cut that time by three quarters. But at the end of the day: WP is designed to publish a blog. Beyond that: you can extend it to do a whole lot more: but that becomes progressively more complicated, and more and more of a hack.

ExpressionEngine by contrast, is a dream to work with. I can drop a HTML/CSS file into a template, and in an afternoon, I can have a fully working, database driven website.

What’s more impressive is the level of support that EE boasts. Most of the support happens on their forums- which I was initially skeptical about, but, I posted an issue I had to the technical support forum at noon. Six hours later, their support team had reproduced the bug, identified a workaround, written a fix for the bug, sent me a copy of it, and slated it for inclusion in the next release.

By contrast: when we find a similar issue with another unnamed vendor- the response to the phone call we make to them is “Right. We knew that was a bug, and we haven’t fixed it yet. We will at some [interminate] point in the future.” They might suggest some clumsy workaround, or just recommend we don’t use a particular ‘feature’.

In short: Expression Engine is helping us get a little closer to doing the what’s really important, and less on the technical issues that crop along the way.

The Search

2009-08-28T21:58:28Z

2009 has seen a whole lot of changes for Young Adult Cancer Canada - we’ve grown to seven employees in the office, significantly expanded the Shave, the Retreat, launched a Workshop, and the biggest Conference to date this fall.

We also completely redesigned and rebuilt our website. And, while it’s been a long process, we’re slowly launching all of the new features we’ve been planning for ever so long. The latest to go live is the search function that’s found a new home at the top of the blue bar.

This search is built on the core Expression Engine functionality: which searches through the close to 700 pages of content we’ve published to date on the web to find what you’re looking for. We’ll be publishing substantially more in the future, as we develop some processes internally to make that happen.

Terms can be excluded from the search with a “-” in front of the term, for example: Geoff - Eaton
Exact phrases can be searched by enclosing them in quotes, for example: “Geoff Eaton”

There’s lot’s more to come in the near future, so stay tuned!

One feed to rule them all

2009-08-25T02:34:27Z

Earlier this month, we sent out our first email newsletter, Up to Here.

Pretty normal for an organization, to send out a periodic newsletter. What’s cool about this one however, is that we didn’t actually do anything to send it. No one in the office compiled articles, edited them, formatted the HTML, and hit send in our email marketing software (we’re using MailChimp: though it’s known as ‘Coco’ or ‘MonkeyChimp’ around the office).

It sent itself automatically. It drew 2-3 posts from each of the feeds we have up on our site, chose the ones that were most popular over the last 31 days, and sent it out. And, it’ll continue to do so, every month without interaction from us, though decidedly with tweaks here and there.

Mailchimp is integrated with our Google Analytics account, so, we can pretty easily see the effect of traffic from the first issue of Up to Here on our website: that’s what the screen shot shows: we’ve had 333 visits to our website as a result of the email, 14% or so our total traffic over the past month. Not to shabby.

The greatest benefit is that it allows us in the office to put more time into our programs and, thus, more time into making them successful. We all know how much time a simple task like a newsletter can require: a meeting to brainstorm some ideas, followup meetings to monitor progress of content, tracking it down, formatting it, figuring out the list, printing it, stuffing the envelopes. Up to Here requires none of those: we just need to be focused on communicating our programs well on the web: something that we’d have to do regardless.

Geoff Eaton - Entrepreneur of the Year finalist

2009-07-14T16:33:22Z

All of us here at Young Adult Cancer Canada, are beyond proud to report that our Fearless Leader (YACC’s Executive Director, Geoff Eaton) has been named one of the Atlantic Canadian finalists for Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. Although we know Geoff’s passion and drive first-hand, we are delighted that he is being recognized for his impressive achievements over the past nine years since beginning Young Adult Cancer Canada. In addition to building a reputable organization that continues to grow and evolve, Geoff’s drive to assist young adults with cancer remains as strong as ever, and guides the development and implementation of every YACC program and initiative.

The Atlantic winners will be announced at a banquet on October 1, 2009. We are excitedly keeping our fingers crossed and wish him nothing but the best of luck!

Facebook Group vs Facebook Page

2009-07-08T17:07:37Z

When Facebook finally hit mainstream here in Newfoundland, it was pretty simple. There were people, photos, events, groups - that was it.

Then Facebook relaunched, and added new applications. That was cool for the first day, then we all got hit by invitations to ‘Bite a zombie’ or to answer a quiz which seemed to have been written by an illiterate monkey on a typewriter. In short, not a whole lot of fun.

In the time since, it seems to have moved back to normal, but the Facebook team have since launched a new feature: Pages. These are similar to groups but, from the point of view of the administrator, they offer some great advantages.

The first is that we can target messages sent out to the group by geography, gender and age. So we will be able to connect with our supporters in Montreal if we were to say, have a one day workshop there. Or send out a Touch Yourself reminder to guys that was different than that for girls.

We’ve also added a Facebook RSS application to our page, so it should update itself every time we make a new post on the website. This is great for us as it will allow us to keep focused on improving in one key area: making our website really fantastic and engaging.

The other thing is that offers some actual statistical analysis of what we’re doing. When combining this information with the data we’ve been collecting with Google Analytics, we can hopefully pull out some information that will teach us how we can improve on what we’re doing: to help end the isolation for young adults in Canada dealing with cancer.

So if you haven’t already, we would love it if you became a fan of us on Facebook, and invite any friends who might be interested.