Conference finds ‘500 ways’ to fight cancer
[attach]7417[/attach]Since beating Hodgkin’s lymphoma almost five years ago, Leaside resident Nadia Gulamhusein has dedicated a lot of her free time to speaking with youth, “encouraging them,” she says, to “make the most of any circumstances dealt to them in their lifetimes.”
“The journey was incredibly impactful on my life,” she says of the struggle that began when she was diagnosed at age 24 with a form of cancer that affects white blood cells.
In June, she’ll celebrate her fifth year of remission.
The supply teacher, who operates in both the York Region and Toronto District school boards, was a volunteer organizer with the Canadian Cancer Society’s inaugural #MyIdea youth conference held Jan. 11 at the organization’s headquarters on St. Clair Avenue West.
Twenty-six students from across the Greater Toronto Area gathered to share their fundraising ideas with the organization.
“We’ve seen youth across Ontario do things like create flash mobs and shoot videos and host fashion shows, and we’re hoping to use those kinds of fresh young ideas in the upcoming year to spearhead some of our advocacy campaigns,” said Sara Trotta, CCS’s Ontario community health partnership coordinator.
The conference began with a presentation from motivational speaker Joel Hilchey, who encouraged students to embrace risk — a lesson he taught by demonstrating how to safely trigger mousetraps — and to practise what he called “brain sprouting,” where participants start with one idea and multiply it many times over.
After hearing ideas, such as North Toronto Collegiate’s Yafa Bale’s suggestion for a food-centric event, the students picked three and expanded on them.
Bale’s was one of the ideas chosen. With contributions from others, it soon expanded into a specially-made cookie cutter of a daffodil, which is the cancer society’s traditional emblem. Various foods could be cut in the daffodil shape, and pictures of it could be posted on Instagram.
Bale, whose grandmother survived breast cancer 10 years ago and lung cancer this past fall, said she was thrilled by the opportunity to support awareness of cancer and how to prevent it.
Other ideas included creating Facebook groups, taking vows of silence to encourage others to abstain from using flavoured tobacco, creating graffiti projects and even topiary, organizer Gulamhusein said.
“They actually came up with over 500 things they could do to spread awareness,” she said. “It was an absolutely phenomenal
conference.”