Hi everyone,

I'm Sarah and I am the Survivor Chair for the Relay For Life of Bridgewater State College in Mass. Our Relay is in March and I'm having my fellow students vote on the song for our lap and I need some suggestions on the songs. I'm survivor myself but I want to be completely unbias about the songs so I need some help. Thank you!

Does anyone have a Caregiver Registration form that they use to track caregivers?  We'd like to keep track of them, but don't want to reinvent the wheel if there is already a form. Thanks!

I am a first time survivorship chair and this year we are really pushing not only for year-round survivor and caregiver engagement, but also for community education as to what the true definition of a survivor (and a caregiver, for that matter) is.  Many survivors in our area do not consider themselves to be survivors simply because they endured only one type of treatment-like surgery or radiation- but didn't lose their hair or have to be out of work for long or things like that.  Many caregivers do not consider themselves caregivers because the survivor in their lives was never bed-ridden or out of work.  Our greatest challenge this year is for survivors and caregivers to truly self-identify, and to know that we want to honor all those who have heard the words "You have cancer, " and those who have cared for them in any way, at our Relay- regardless of what type of treatments they have endured or care they gave.  Anyone else trying to go this route?  

Hey Michelle,

This is for Survivor/Caregiver.

The Survivor Calendar needs to be copied 8 times, it is 4 pages in length and each page should have 8 copies.

The pictures are to be enlarged and laminated; 2' x 3' or 3' x 2' according to picutre layout.

The RFL logo is for the giant luminaria bag that they are making with the PVC pipe.

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!

Does anyone have any experience in putting together a team of survivors who may otherwise have no team affiliation and most likely have never met the other team members before joining the team?

We're trying something new to encourage survivor participation after the opening ceremony...

Kris

To get survivors who do not have team affiliation more connected at the Relay, I'm looking for input on forming a team made up solely with survivors.  It's likely that none of the team members have met each other prior to joining the team.

Any words of wisdom from events that have done this?

Kris

We are trying to come up with ideas to honor the caregivers at the actual event.  We have thought about have seperate shirts for them, but that could get to be a little expensive.  Does anyone else honor caregivers at the event or have any ideas on how to?

Thanks in advance for any help!!!

Hi everyone,

I'm a student at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts and we held our first Relay last weekend on campus for students, faculty and staff. I'm an 18 year leukemia survivor and we had 22 survivors sign up and I thought "oh awesome, I'm going to be able meet other students who had cancer too". Well only 8 survivors showed up and I was the only student at the Survivor Dinner. I am going to be on the committee next year and I'm the Survivor Chair and my question to all of you is does anyone have any ideas on how to recruit survivors, especially student-survivors for our Relay so we more than 8 show up next year? I would really appreciate your imput,

Sarah

This is my 3rd year as survivorship chair for my relay (almost 10 yr involvement).  Since we no longer are using kintera, how are other chairs receiving information on survivors who register online for their survivor's lap?  I miss being able to personally contact my new and returning survivors.  I'm told that my local ACS office can run a report for me, but that seems to be an additional and unnecessary step.  Suggestions, comments?

 Christine