GEARing up for October

October is unbelievably busy for me. Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably know that it's breast cancer awareness month. As a breast cancer survivor and VP of a national breast cancer non-profit, I have a love-hate relationship with this month. I love that it brings so many awareness opportunities for the YSC. I love that I have many personal opportunities to talk about the YSC and tell my story.
However, I get very pinked-out by ALL the pink products. It started as a few things here and there...the ribbons, the Yoplait lids, Edy's Ice Cream...and then things seemed to change about 3 years ago...now you see pink Cheerios, pink toilet paper, and pink . . . wait for it . . . vacuum cleaners. Last year I even gave a talk about buying pink (or not!) as a form of breast cancer advocacy work. Some consider the shopping a form of fund raising. Others view it as being pimped out as a survivor by some often less than legitimate forms of fundraising. I tend to agree with this view and am skeptical of most pink efforts.
**sighs**
That being said, the YSC has developed a wonderfully supportive relationship with the Hershey's Corporation. Several years ago they decided to do pink cream centered York Peppermint Patties and gave us a sizable minimum donation (none of the xx% goes to xxx organization crap - high minimum donations and no maximum donations are the way to go and the thing to look for if you are going to buy pink!!). Then they stepped in to become a major sponsor of our annual Tour de Pink. Since then they have increased that minimum donation as well as increased the types of products they "pink" out for sale as well as listing us on most of their products year round.
I love chocolate :-)
Anyway - for more on how Hershey's and gear-heads are helping the YSC -check out this blog!