Hi, Everyone! My name is Chelsea, and I am have been the Survivorship Chair for the Relay of Plainville, CT for two years. I was just wondering if anyone has some good ideas about how to help maintain and attract new survivors, creative gifts to give them, or even decorations or other logistics. We have our survivor dinner after our survivor and carefiver lap, in a pavillion and a tent off to the side. We had around 80 survivors last year, my first year, an increase from about 40 the year before. This year we are expecting a few more. We are a somewhat small community, but many people are coming from different parts of CT. (Our radio host at the event was a survivor that lived outside of the area, but he liked the reception so much, that even though he is not hosting the event this year, he is still making the trek for the reception!) We have about 3-4 different main dishes donated from different local resturaunts, and get about 25-30 different door prizes donated from local businesses in the form of gift certificates, gift baskets, etc. We give out a special ACS Relay bag filled with different goodies each year to every survivor, and of course, we have the tee shirts given at registration, and the medals and a flower at the Lap. What I feel we come up short on, however, is survivor events during the rest of the year. This year, we did a Valentine's Day social. We also tried to get a private movie shown at our local theatre on a morning, but they really balked at the idea. If anyone has any ideas about how I can improve anything about the event, please let me know!

Thanks, Chelsea Tyrrell