Women who have breast cancer may receive lots of medical bills in the mail, but thanks to ASU students, they’re also receiving encouraging letters.
The Barrett Leadership and Service Team, known as BLAST has partnered with Barrett, the Honors College, to continue the tradition of their letter writing campaign.
“The college wanted to come alongside and give support in whatever way we could, so that’s kind of how that partnership came in,” Ellyse Crow, a program coordinator at Barrett, said.
Crow also said being part of a campaign really shows Barrett's commitment to community service and it's a good opportunity to show students that it's easy and important to get involved in the community.
The two organizations also work with Girls Love Mail, a charity that collects the letters students write to send to the recently diagnosed breast cancer patients.
“A couple of years ago, the second advisor who was really passionate about getting started and getting connected and supporting the Girls Love Mail Campaign. I think it was independent research on her part,” said Keith Southergill, the primary advisor to BLAST and admissions director at Barrett.
Southergill also said they have participated in the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk, which took place this past Saturday, for several years. The walk was sponsored by the American Cancer Society and took place at Tempe Beach Park.
“It’s really nice, we meet here at the college and we walk up to Tempe Town Lake, we kind of walk to the walk and then we participate and then we actually come back down here afterwards and we’ll write more letters,” Southergill said.
There are mailboxes, which BLAST makes in their kick off event at the beginning of the month, around the Barrett complex to collect letters.
The first year of the letter writing campaign, they wrote about 500 to 1,000 letters Southergill said, and it continues to grow with each year.
This year the group had 49 people sign up a couple of days before the walk, but Southergill expected the number, which includes Barrett students, faculty and staff, to grow to 60 by Friday. They will continue to collect letters throughout the end of October, but Southergill considers the walk a sort of symbolic end to the month-long campaign.
Students also contribute to leading the initiative, such as material sciences and engineering junior Nathan London.
“It’s a great way to help bring some joy to the people who are going through a really tough time,” said London, who is also the social service director for BLAST.
Below: A sample letter from the Girls Love Mail website shows what the project is all about.
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Reach the reporter at avcabral@asu.edu or follow @angeligagaa on Twitter.
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