Embargoed to Monday, June 29, 2009
Have you ever seen an invitation to a Relay for Life of Second Life event and shrugged, and walked away, thinking ... ‘Oh, it’s an AMERICAN event’?
Have you ever passed by a fundraising kiosk thinking ‘Why should I donate my Lindens to an AMERICAN cause’?
Well, you’d be wrong, on both counts.
In 2009, local volunteers all over the real world are organizing overnight Relay for Life events to support cancer organizations in: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom - as well as in the United States of America.
Relay for Life goes by many names – as ‘Revezando pela vida’ in Brazil, ‘Arrangør af Stafet For Livet’ in Denmark, ‘Relais Pour La Vie’ in france and Luxembourg, ‘Lauf ins Leben’ in Germany, ‘Relevo por la vida’ in Honduras, ‘Samenloop voor Hoop’ in the Netherlands, and as ‘Um Dia Pela Vida’ in Portugal. But all with the same message: Celebrate, Remember, and Fight Back.
And the same holds true for Relay for Life of Second Life. The theme of this year’s event, chaired by Fayandria Foley, is ‘One World, One Hope’. At the latest count, there will be avatars from at least 20 different real world countries walking the track on July 18-19. And, according to Stingray9798 Raymaker, the American Cancer Society’s representative in Second Life, ‘Around 12-15% of all monies raised for Relay for Life of Second Life go towards INTERNATIONAL causes’.
The International Relations Committee of Relay for Life of Second Life is a team of ambassadors from the UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, and Norway who are reaching out to the international communities in Second Life to inform them about Relay for Life and invite them to participate. The committee is translating key documents into foreign languages and placing them at international community sims, and there will be an international area and information point at Relay.
If you would like to help, or if you would like to learn more about the international work of Relay for Life of Second Life, please contact: Poppy Zabelin (International Relations Chair) or Rob Chandrayaan (International Relations Co-Chair and Public Relations Co-Chair).
Continued in the RFL section
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