How a young woman promotes breast cancer awareness through quilts

by Martine House

I received the following email from Kim Elicker:
"My name is Kimberly Elicker, and I am a high school senior from Hanover, PA, working on my Girl Scout Gold Award. My project is a breast cancer awareness campaign that is designed to promote prevention and early detection. As a part of my project, I am creating pink ribbon community quilts. People construct a single block from instructions given to them in a kit with material and breast cancer information. They send me the finished block, and area quilting groups will assemble them into quilts to be put in display. Breast cancer awareness information will be with the displayed quilts to further spread the message. Once the quilts are finished being displayed, I will donate them to breast cancer survivors.

Please help me with my project. My website explains the project in more detail. Would you be willing to place a blurb on your website encouraging quilters to become involved in my project? The more people who recieve the message, the more lives that will be saved."

I went to her website and was really impressed by what she is doing. To achieve her goals she is using quilts, which just about everybody associates with comfort, home, beauty, family and which makes them a very powerful vehicle to convey an idea. She has also recognized a major problem that affects many women and their families. Most importantly, she is willing to spend time and efforts to do something about it: promoting awareness and support.

She is asking quilters to make a block following the pattern and instructions that she provides on her website and which can be easily downloaded. You can either use your own fabrics or request a kit from her. When she receives enough blocks, she pieces them into quilts, that will be exhibited at first and then donated to hospitals for breast cancer survivors.
So please, if you are a quilter, help her with her project by making a block, and help yourself too by being more aware of what your can do to detect breast cancer early on and increase survival chances. If you are not a quilter, you can still help her by visiting her website at http://thinkpinkribbons.tripod.com, signing her guest book, but most importantly by spreading the word to people you know.

Breast cancer is often seen as a woman's problem. I cannot stress enough that it concerns everybody, women, men and children, since a whole family can be destroyed by it. So parents, make sure you teach your young daugthers how to regurlarly do a self exam. Husbands, remind your spouses once a month to do the same.

I think it is just wonderful when young people are taking an active role in a valuable cause (which is actually more than many of us adults are doing!) and the least we can do is support them. Again, here is Kim's website:http://thinkpinkribbons.tripod.com

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