Several events throughout Athens raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness Month

As reported recently in the Athens Banner-Herald, during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month throughout Athens, there were several walks, picnics and fundraisers to support breast cancer victims.

Campus organizations helped bring awareness to the support and services available for students or their affected family members.

On Oct. 7 The Loran Smith Center for Cancer Support hosted their annual “In Their Shoes,” a walk or run event to raise funds that will help support the activities provided by the center.

Oncology social worker Lauren Liverman said that this year’s event was a 10K run or walk instead of a 13.1-mile run.

“This is a very active town and we did have a lot of great community awareness this year,” Liverman told the paper. “There was definitely a lot of community involvement and I only expect that that will increase [next year].”

Liverman said their practice offers counseling services, support groups, yoga classes and many other quality-of-life classes to cancer survivors and their caregivers.

About the same time as the “In Their Shoes” 10K, the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority hosted their annual Pink Picnic on the front lawn of the Zeta house to raise funds for their national philanthropy breast cancer education and awareness.

Caroline Stroud, president of Zeta Tau Alpha, said about 600 members of the Athens community attended the BBQ lunch and corn hole tournament.

Aside from the Pink Picnic, the sorority also hosts an annual single softball tournament every spring to contribute to the philanthropy’s funds.

​“This year, we proudly raised over $100,000 to give back to breast cancer education and awareness,” Stroud said.

​Bulldogs Battling Breast Cancer, another organization which was started by Jay and Teresa Abbot to raise money “to fight breast cancer through early detection and assistance to women in need who may not have the resources to get the services they need to fight the disease,” the website said.

According to Jay Abbot, the non-profit was founded a year after Teresa was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. Though they had only planned to host the event once, they just celebrated their 13th annual golf tournament.

Jay Abbot said the gold tournament is organized with current football players and coaches every year. The football players are assigned to a group of three people for the tournament, which gives fans a chance to interact with the players and allows everyone to talk about the reasons they are there to support.

“Everything that we raise goes to help fight breast cancer,” Jay Abbot said. “We have no administrative costs at all.”

The St. Mary’s Foundation in Athens, which is the benefactor for the Abbott’s charity, received $85,000 from the charity the beginning of this year. The funds will benefit women with breast cancer in need of treatment and other technologies being developed to detect breast cancer earlier.

“We do it out of love for Teresa, first of all, and we’re just trying to do something for the community and to help fight this horrible disease,” Jay Abbott said.

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