By Andrea Photopoulos

Dressed in their blue and white Daughter's of Penelope shirts and a lot of pink of course, members of the San Jose Daphne #29 Chapter along with supportive friends walked proudly for the cause. October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Team Daphne walked to represent not only their organization, but in honor of all Greeks who have been affected by this horrible disease. The event took place in downtown San Jose at Guadalupe River Park and was very well organized and well done. Large white tents and a main stage covered the grassy areas of the park to form a pink and white “Village of Hope”. Within the village were different stations including health education, a store, healthy snacks and on stage a live band that kept the crowd excited and motivated. Outside the village, participants were cheered on and guided throughout the walk by volunteers of all ages. Everyone walking had somehow been affected by breast cancer in their life and wore stickers with names of people that they walked in honor or in memory of. An emotional morning for sure, but a positive one and it felt good to be making a difference and raising awareness. All in all, it was a huge success and with all the other festivities of the Halloween weekend, (especially with the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series, Woohoo!) it was nice to see such a good turnout.

According to the American Cancer Society “the chance of a woman having invasive breast cancer some time during her life is a little less then 1 in 8. The chance of dying from breast cancer is about 1 in 35. Breast cancer death rates have been going down. This is probably the result of finding the cancer earlier and better treatment. Right now there are more than 2½ million breast cancer survivors in the United States. As of today, November 1st Making Strides Against Breast Cancer has raised $573,152.24 to help save lives. Please see what you can do to support this program and help raise awareness about breast cancer in your community. Let's make a difference together. Visit www.cancer.org and search “Making Strides”.