Hello friends and happy Friday!
I do love Friday's, don't you?!?!?!?
If you follow my
Facebook page, then you probably already saw this flyer there, but I wanted to share more information on what is going on!
Anyone who knows me personally knows that I am very into volunteering and participating in Relay for Life. This started back my senior year of high school in National Honor Society. Our big volunteer project that year was participating in Relay for Life. One of the girls that I graduated with lost her father our senior year to Pancriatic cancer, and both of our ensamble choir's attended his funeral to support her family (we were two small close knit groups of chorus kids that had been together the entire time we were in high school).
So last year shortly after I arrived to Hohenfels I spotted a blurb about Relay for Life needing volunteers for the committee in our base newspaper. I immediately emailed the event coordinator and signed on to be part of the committee and I became the Social Media coordinator for the event. I set up an email, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to cover most of our social media bases, and started to help spread the word of our event.
We only had like 2-3 months to plan this event. Since we're overseas we don't have a branch of the American Cancer Society, so we technically fall under the one in McKinney, Texas, where our Event coordinator's family lives and participates in their own event there. So we get everything shipped to us from Texas! Amazingly enough, we got the entire event set up and ready in our short time frame, and it was quite a success between you and me. Our event raised over $18,000 for Relay for Life, I ended up being a Team Captain last minute for the Army Community Service (ACS) team, and most everything went off without a hitch.... but I wanted to do something more!
Last year I played with the idea of combining my love of Relay and my love of photography, but I was so busy with work and getting the event ready, that I didn't get much done with that (although I did make a lot of
ribbon keychains to sell and they were quite a hit!) So a couple of weeks ago, I got in touch with a local photographer and pitched my idea to her, and she LOVED it! So my Hope Sessions were born!
Thankfully, we started planning the 2015 Relay at the beginning of this year, so we have more awareness for our event, more time to plan and get things together, and more time to raise money. I looked at our event page when I planned this post on Tuesday, and we had already raised almost $3,400 with like 18 teams participating already! THIS IS AWESOME!!!!!
On 24 May, myself, the photographer I contacted Jessica of Jessica Mann Photography, and three other local photograhers are getting together in a field in a local town and conducting 10 mini sessions each. A mini session is a 15 minute session and they recieve 5 digital images and a print release, all for $50. All the money will be donated to our Relay event on the 6th of June!
My plan is to conduct these themed mini-sessions twice a year (once in Spring before the Relay and once again during the month of October for Breast Cancer Awareness month). All the money I raise will be donated either to Relay for Life (Spring time) or the American Cancer Society's branch of Breast Cancer Awareness. I will be making this a yearly fundraiser event and look forward to spreading awareness for both of these events!
If you would like to donate to my team for Relay for Life, please visit
this link and donate there. Any amount is helpful and most welcome!
Stay tuned for 29 May, where I will share pictures from the first Fundraiser mini sessions and again 12 June for pictures from the actual Relay for Life event!
