TISDALE — The Terry Fox Run returns to the Tisdale community.
Wendy Cleaveley is the volunteer heading the run in Tisdale this year.
Finding volunteers for the Terry Fox Run can be challenging, said Heather Mackenzie, provincial director for the Terry Fox Foundation.
“We’re finding the people that remember Terry running, those people are becoming older and that memory is being lost. So we’re trying to stay more relevant with Millennials (adults age 22 to 37), and people before that and the way we do that is through schools,” Mackenzie said. “And the way we do that in Tisdale in particular, is it’s very strong in the schools, but the community runs are dying a little bit.”
Another reason she said it can be difficult to recruit organizers for the Terry Fox Run is because more charities host runs as fundraisers.
“Terry was the first charity run, ever, and now that’s the thing,” Mackenzie said. “Everybody has a run, everybody has a walk. It’s not so hard to find participants to come and really build the legacy of Terry and raise money for cancer research, but it can be hard to find someone to take care of those logistics throughout the day.”
The foundation typically takes 15 per cent for operating costs and the other 85 per cent goes to research. This 15 per cent is used to get run organizers their kits and set-up the event. This 15 per cent won’t be taken from the money raised in Tisdale this year.
“One hundred per cent will be donated, they’re zero cost events. They’re all run by volunteers, and all the items there would be donated, so the event itself costs no money,” Mackenzie said.
Items donated can range from water bottles to tents.
According to Mackenzie, the Terry Fox run isn’t about cancer awareness, but the research itself.
“It doesn’t go into T-shirts and pins and things like that, we’re very grassroots, we’re very low cost, so the most money that you donate will go to cancer research, so people in the Allan Blair, people in the cancer care clinic in Saskatoon, like it’s affecting them in real time. So our turn-over is very quick. It’s not about awareness for us, like some cancer agencies.”
The Terry Fox Found-ation uses the money for a variety of different cancer research. One of those is PROFYLE.
“Terry Fox Research Institute is where the money goes and people apply for grants and grant money for different cancers, so we’re not just going after one cancer, we’re going after several different types of cancers,” Mackenzie said. “And one right now is PROFYLE, what it is, is pediatric cancer research where if a child is diagnosed with cancer and survives that cancer and has a second bout of cancer, that mortality rate is pretty low. So with the Terry Fox Foundation right now through PROFYLE is focusing on doing is the 20 per cent that are incurable. The incurable pediatric diseases.”
The run takes place on Sept. 16.
