"Walk for Harry 2007"

This past year, I was a chair for Miami Country School's annual breast cancer walk that took place on October 27,2007. All of our proceeds went directly through the Heidi Hewes Chapter to the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer center at the University of Miami in order to provide tools, equpment and pay researchers to find a cure for cancer. Our goal this year was to obtain $ 50,000. For over seven months, my colleagues and I oversaw and planned the entire event. From selecting merchandise to sell, asking for donations from families and friends, to solely planning a school assembly to motivate people to walk, my agenda was pretty filled up. As a head of public relations for the walk itself, I had to make sure newspapers and local television stations were covering the walk itself and created various forms of advertisement to spread over the Miami Shores community in order to gain support. The summer prior to my senior year, my friend and classmate, Harry Greenberg, was diagnosed with cancer in his leg and had to have his leg amputated. Harry became a prime motivation for me to make this walk as successful as possible. Due to his optimistic look on everything, my fellow chairs and I decided to honor Harry by naming the walk after him. In order to bring awareness to my peersl, I ran a schoolwide assembly where I had speakers of both sexes who had once been victims of breast cancer and recovered and had Harry's parents speak about his progression to show that cancer can happen to anyone at any age. I also had to make sure that committee members were fulfilling their goals and would sometimes had to fill the spots of those who didnt. On the day of the walk itself, I was running around making sure every aspect was perfect and going smoothly. With our merchandise sales, donations and mass support of 300 walkers, we were able to raise $107,667 in Harry's name, which was a 243% increase and had the best walk Country Day School has seen yet! We far surpassed our expectations and to see how much my school united as a whole for one cause was unbelievable. It has been incredible to know that my involvement in this walk has had a huge impact and hopefully the cure for cancer will be attainable in the next few years.