Giving Hope for the future

ELIZABETH JOSEPH
Michelle Shipanga

On the 12 of October Dawid Bezuidenhout High School held a Cancer Awareness Day for the grade 10 and 11 learners. Cancer is a reality and statistics have shown that every 1 out of 8 women will get breast cancer.

What an awesome event? Not only was it well-attended, but informative and definitely with limited financial sponsorships, a lot of hard word, resourcefulness and ingenious planning, effort had to be put in to guarantee a successful event for our girls.

We were entertained by the creative dance group from our school, as well as by our every own Harmony Singers with “Carry your Candle”.

A Survivor of cancer, Ms A. Booysen, related her journey during her fight against breast cancer. One of our learners, Shannah Mwanawina, who lost her mom to breast cancer, gave us hope with her talk on how to cope after such a loss.

Ms Janine Eiman, a radiographer and breast cancer survivor shared importance of information from a medical perspective. She covered Breast Self-Examination (BSE) and the importance of a good life style in her talk.

As a reminder of the event, everyone partook in an activity, creating a bracelet which symbolizing “Hope for the future”. A coin laying ceremony was done thereafter accompanied by one of our talented soloists, Chrizelda Adams with her rendition of “Open your heart”. The money raised, N$1400-00 will be donated to the Cancer Association of Namibia.

We believe in empowering our girls with information beyond that of the syllabi as well, so that they may make informed, wise decisions regarding lifestyle and their be knowledgeable about health in general.

On behalf of the organizing committee, I wish to express our appreciation and gratitude to all who donated or supported us in some way, contributing to the success of this valuable event. We plan to make this an annual occurance.