I chaired the Texas A&M University-Commerce event for two years and I now serve as their university faculty advisor. Anyway, one of our biggest challenges was getting youth survivors involved. We got faculty and community survivors to come out, but younger people have perhaps more reservations about being on the "spotlight" or being recognized as survivors. Does anyone have suggestions or ideas on how to involve and recruit youth/college survivors?

I am co-chairing the Relay For Life of UC Davis right now and we have had a difficult time getting young cancer survivors to be involved as well. Many of our dedicated survivors actually receive the young cancer survivors scholarship, so it may be useful to contact your local ACS office or talk to your staff partner. They may be able to put you in contact with these young survivors. Also, if your college has a Colleges Against Cancer chapter, they may have connections with young cancer survivors so it would be beneficial to work with them too. We have found it is very helpful to have young survivors contact and work closely with other young survivors. If you find one dedicated survivor, perhaps they can be the point of contact for other young survivors. It's one of the things that has worked best for us. Hope this helps. :)

Sarah Evingham

One thing you can do is have a young (ish) cancer survivor personally invite people. Also I know my school has one and yours might too, but there might be a facebook group for cancer survivors. Use that to issue them an invite to kickoffs or rallies as well as the main event.