This was the first year we entered the Relay For Life West Bloomfield with our own team and we found it to be a very fun and rewarding experience! For those who don’t know, Relay For Life is a community fundraising event put on through the American Cancer Society to raise money for research to find a cure for cancer. We had donated in the past and Ally had attended several of the past Relays. I have to admit that this was my first Relay, and now that I’ve been I don’t plan on missing another one…
Photo Credit Hala Eliya Photography
Go Team Frameable Faces!
As pretty much everyone has, we have certainly been touched by cancer in our families and with our friends and so we thought it was time we did something about it – using our brand and our resources to try to raise money to make a world with more birthdays and less cancer, and for our first year I am happy to report we raised almost $1500. Just so you know you can actually still donate to the cause for this year’s relay through August 31st if you like at our team page. We had a few partners worth noting who helped us – we did fundraising days at Zoe’s House Of Pancakes and Leaf & Berry, and Hiller’s Markets donated fruit which we made into fruit kebobs and sold at the Team Frameable Faces tent at the Relay.
Disclaimer – the following photos were snapped with a Droid and are of varying quality, but they are included here to tell the story of the day.
We started with a fruit kebob-making party here at the studio Friday night June 7th…
Fruit Kebob Party!
Joel Ben-Moche cuts up some watermelon! Yum!
Then Saturday morning started the Relay with the walk of the survivors…
Walk of cancer survivors
We spent the day manning the Frameable Faces tent with our team!
Fruit Kebobs!!! Get your fruit kebobs here!!!
Frameable Faces Senior Carly Simko shows off her awesome decorations!
JC Sidaway sells origami canoes to raise money to fight cancer!
Several dignitaries came to the event including Senator Debbie Stabenow…
Senator Stabenow addresses the crowd
Okay this was amazing…. on a day when people spent a lot of time remembering those who lost their battles with cancer an amazing rainbow circle around the sun appeared directly above the event….
Incredible
We then decorated luminaria bags in memory of those we’ve lost, and then the entire track was ringed with lit bags at night time while everyone walked a lap in silence. An extremely touching and powerful moment.
Team Frameable Faces luminaria bags
Luminaria bags lit with candles
Parting Comments
The Relay is a 24 hour event and Ally and I spent about 17 hours there. Now that I’ve done it I get how special it is. I don’t have a good reason why I hadn’t been before. There was a nice turnout of people, but frankly there weren’t enough. There is no good reason or excuse for not going to your local Relay For Life. You don’t have to have the means to donate huge chunks of money in order to attend. No one will hound you to give. But you certainly can give, and you can certainly support the cause even if it’s in spirit. Even if you just come hungry and eat at the Relay – every bit helps. You will see a ton of people you know and you will feel a really nice sense of community. As for Team Frameable Faces this year was a good start but we can absolutely do better. We truly hope you will join us next year as we come together again to CELEBRATE, REMEMBER, and FIGHT BACK!