This has been an amazing contest with some great photo and story entries from showing wonderful support to those near and dear to our hearts. We appreciate all of the time that went into writing these stories and we love having the opportunity to read about everyone’s supportive network.
It was an extremely tough decision to pick only one winner. After long consideration from our judges, we have chosen a winner because of their touching story and heart-felt photo. We’re excited to announce the winner of the Stories of Strength and Support Contest is, Jenna McGrath! To read their story please click HERE.
This is a picture of Senior Day at my brother's football game in high school last year. It was also a game dedicated to breast cancer awareness. The two of them are walking off the field together.
Congratulations! As our winner you will enjoy: e a two night stay at the Pink Room, $200 in dinning credit at Kil@wat inside the InterContinental Milwaukee and a massage for two at WELL Spa + Janice Salon.
If you have a story to tell of strength and support, feel free to share HERE.
So grateful for good health and so grateful for ABCD: After Breast Cancer Diagnosis. Still I recall the days after diagnosis; days of fear and a sense that I must rush to do something but not knowing what. How do I continue to be a strong, capable woman at work and home?
Thankfully, I found ABCD and with it found the support and understanding I so needed. A mentor who held my hand…over the phone lines. My mentor; a coach, a friend, a strong professional woman and an inspiration. I made it through the surgeries, treatment and medications and today I am a mentor. Reaching out my hand…
Therese Burkhart and Audrey Warner, ABCD: After Breast Cancer Diagnosis Mentors
Audrey Warner, ABCD: After Breast Cancer Diagnosis Mentor
Date with a Plate is such fun event, great food, music, tempting auction items, and a room of lovely Kessler diamonds. The Kessler diamonds sparkled as did the amazing mentors.
Each woman, with a personal triumph over breast cancer and a willingness to guide others through that journey. It was a great opportunity to raise a glass to toast all the mentors!
Share with us your triumph over breast cancer and let us celebrate with you.
Is there ever a time to celebrate cancer? Maybe not. But I do believe it’s right, even mandatory, to celebrate when people succeed in conquering it. And ABCD’s annual event to celebrate the “power of one-to-one” in dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis is truly a great celebration.
Date with a Plate is now in its 11th year. From a board member perspective, it’s a perfect event. It’s a “friend-raiser” and a fundraiser. Last year, 700 people enjoyed the terrific food, silent auction, location and people.
The attendees at each year’s event participate for lots of reasons: some would do anything to support ABCD’s mission; some come for the amazing array of auction items and tasty samples from 15+ area restaurants; some enjoy seeing the inside of great Milwaukee businesses and mingling with their execs; and some just like to attend an event that doesn’t involve a stuffy sit-down dinner.
On the fundraising side, it’s terrific as well. The venue is donated, as are the auction items and all the food. The only significant cost is the invitation! This means that nearly all of the proceeds go to the mission of ensuring personalized one-to-one support for anyone who receives a breast cancer diagnosis.
Most importantly, Date with a Plate is a great time! It’s fun, enjoyable, meaningful and… tasty! And this year will be no exception — in fact, it’s going to be the best ever. I hope you’ll join us at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Printing Facility on Friday, May 6. Check out all the details and register online at www.abcdbreastcancersupport.org See you there!
The thing about breast cancer is this: it is never what you expect. And yet, surprises can change lives.
The “C” word is always a punch in the gut and then some. Whether you have a family history, or like most breast cancer patients, you do not, the words “you have breast cancer” are always a shock.
Yet, for all its heartache, I get to experience some joy every day because I work at ABCD: After Breast Cancer Diagnosis. Here women (and men) whose lives have been impacted by breast cancer commit themselves to making the healing journey a bit easier for someone who now faces a breast cancer diagnosis. There is a generosity in our volunteer mentors that boggles the mind. One-to-one they support others; people that they have never met but who, because of a breast cancer diagnosis, they already “know.”
That sense of generosity born of personal experience is also why the Pink Room came to be.
Women who work at the Intercontinental who have been personally touched by breast cancer – one of whom is a proud ABCD mentor – conceived the entire project. They have created a hotel experience quite different than what you might expect. The rooms are pink, yes, but they are sophisticated and modern with that distinctive Intercontinental Hotel feel. Your Pink Room stay includes the opportunity to learn about triumph over breast cancer from ABCD mentors’ personal stories and the chance to share your own thoughts if you like. Plus, staying at the Intercontinental is all about the joys in life – including one of my favorites – Chocolat Bar.
We look forward to the stories we will hear as the Pink Room welcomes more guests. Stories that will inspire us as we continue to personally support those who next hear the words, “you have breast cancer.”
We are grateful to partner with the Intercontinental Milwaukee. Their team’s creativity and generosity will help ABCD change the experience of breast cancer for countless people. It will help us assure that this journey is less mysterious and less lonely. Pretty surprising accomplishment from a little Pink Room!
InterContinental Milwaukee employees, Bridget Gallagher, Sarah Geitner and Susan Cusatis, all share a personal connection to breast cancer. They have all been affected in different ways, and while each story is unique, they all have a common thread. Each story is rooted in strength and support for a loved one that is near and dear to their hearts.
As Mother’s day approaches, we’d like to highlight these stories of strength and support and reward our community for showing support within their own communities. So share your stories.
From now until May 6th at 5 p.m. CST, send us a 200 word essay, share a photo that displays strength and support and show to those who are fighting a tough battle that they are not alone.
On May 9, 2011, after we’ve collected all your stories, we’ll have our selection committee of Bridget, Sarah and Susan select their top three based on the following criteria.
Originality: You, or someone you know, must have taken this photo. Is your photo and story original, fresh or inventive?
Creativity: How imaginative is your photo/essay? A creative photo and story breaks from traditional methods of presenting ideas and messages.
Effectiveness: Does your photo and essay clearly answer the question: “What does strength and support mean to you?”
From there, the top three stories will be posted on the Pink Room blog. Encourage your friends to “Like” their favorite stories and photographs on the blog and show their support. Then, at 5:00 p.m. CST on May 13, 2011, the selection committee will meet the story that meets the criteria and has the most votes will win an amazing package.
Here’s an interesting example on how one hotel is handling its charitable fundraising efforts: The InterContinental Milwaukee transformed two guestrooms into pink rooms with the goal of raising $10,000 a year for a local breast cancer non-profit.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s article, the InterContinental spent almost a year designing the rooms with all things pink: pink bedding, pink tapestries, pink fabrics from around the world, a pink laptop, pink bathrobe, books about breast cancer and other artistic pieces.
Guests who have been touched by breast cancer or not can show their support by requesting one of the all-things-pink rooms, the story says.
With each booking, the hotel will donate $25 to After Breast Cancer Diagnosis Foundation (ABCD), the story says. Guests will also receive a $25 gift card to the hotel’s lounge, Clear, plus pink cupcakes and a pink room keepsake.
The hotel’s general manager, Tim Smith, tells the paper that the goal is to rent each room about 200 times each year to raise about $10,000 annually.
For more information about the employees who came up with the fundraiser idea, read the full story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Readers: Would you book a specific room in a hotel if you knew that part of the proceeds were going to a cause you support?
What impressed Ginny Finn most about the new Pink Room at the InterContinental Milwaukee hotel was that the idea behind dedicating a room to the fight against breast cancer came from three hotel employees who all had some connection to the disease.
Finn is executive director of the nonprofit organization After Breast Cancer Diagnosis (ABCD), a local one-to-one mentoring program for breast cancer patients. ABCD will benefit from bookings of two InterContinental hotel rooms that have been redecorated in various shades of pink to signify support for women and their families touched by breast cancer. The rooms – one featuring a king-size bed and the other two doubles – also come with pink gourmet cupcakes, a $20 gift card to CLEAR, the hotel’s cocktail and tapas lounge, and a breast cancer awareness keepsake. Guests also may share their personal cancer stories in a journal kept in the room or on the Pink Room blog found at www.pinkroomstories.com.
A portion of the proceeds from room bookings — about $25 per night’s stay — will go to ABCD, founded a decade ago by Melodie Wilson, the Milwaukee television journalist who died of breast cancer in 2009. After her initial diagnosis in 1992, Wilson spent the rest of her life advocating on behalf of cancer patients and their families.
The idea for the Pink Room came from InterContinental’s catering manager Bridget Gallagher, executive assistant Sarah Geitner, general manager Tim Smith and Susan Cusatis, the Milwaukee business travel manager for Marcus Hotels & Resorts, the InterContinental’s parent company.
All wanted to do something at the hotel to show support for people going through breast cancer. Cusatis herself is a survivor — she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2003; and Gallagher and Geitner both knew others close to them who’ve dealt with the disease. Smith indicated his support for the project after Gallagher and Geitner brought the idea to his attention.
Hotel officials contacted Finn and ABCD at the recommendation of Cusatis, whose morale was lifted by an ABCD mentor during her cancer fight and who now volunteers as an ABCD mentor to help other women.
“The personalized support provided by ABCD is quite powerful to anyone diagnosed,” Cusatis said in an interview after the downtown Milwaukee hotel hosted a Pink Room open house late last month.
Finn said she appreciated the fact that the hotel sought her and ABCD’s permission before choosing it to be the benefactor of the proceeds.
“They approached us in a business-like, sincere and humane way,” Finn said. “They didn’t come to us and say, ‘We’re going to do this to you.’ They wanted to know if their idea for the Pink Room would be respectful of people going through breast cancer. They said they wanted it to be genuinely helpful and didn’t want it to be a gimmick.”
The hotel sought Finn’s counsel on what the room should contain (the journal and information on ABCD, for example) to be consistent with ABCD’s mission, and brought in a local designer to work with Gallagher, Geitner and Cusatis on how to appropriately carry the breast cancer awareness theme throughout the rooms.
Not only are the rooms tastefully decorated in a modern style using shades of pink “that anyone would feel comfortable in,” Finn said, the idea of allowing women and other guests affected by breast cancer to write, blog or videotape their personal stories while staying in a relaxing environment fits ABCD’s mission of providing support and comfort to cancer survivors.
A few other U.S. hotels have used pink themes to raise breast cancer awareness. The Hard Rock Hotels in several cities including Chicago, for example, have hosted breast cancer survivor “Pinktober” parties featuring pink towels and sheets during the month of October (National Breast Cancer Awareness Month), with proceeds going to breast cancer research organizations.
But unlike those events, InterContinental Milwaukee’s Pink Room isn’t tied to a specific event or time of year. It’s an ongoing promotion that will help raise ABCD’s profile, Finn said.
And in her opinion, the InterContinental’s project passes the “think before you pink” test for cause-based marketing.
Ever cautious about cause-based marketing being used to sell for-profit products and services, Finn urges consumers to ask whether companies are transparent about which charity will benefit and the percentage or dollar amount in sales that will go toward the cause. When it comes to breast cancer awareness, Finn recommends the website thinkbeforeyoupink.org, sponsored by the Breast Cancer Action organization, which offers a series of questions consumers should ask themselves before buying something with a pink ribbon on it.
As for the Pink Room, proceeds from room bookings will help pay for ABCD services, all of which are provided free to people diagnosed with breast cancer, Finn said. ABCD trains its mentors – more than 500 have been trained since the group’s inception — and some Pink Room proceeds will help fund activities such as mentor outreach and continuing education. In fact, on Aug. 14 ABCD will host a continuing education session for mentors featuring some nationally-recognized speakers.
While they’re in Milwaukee, perhaps some of the session’s attendees might want to book a Pink Room.
What do ThirdCoast Digest readers think of cause-based marketing? Are you more likely to buy something if you know it will benefit a nonprofit or charitable organization? Please share your thoughts.
