Mike and I are so excited that the MRF will be honoring President Jimmy Carter with a Courage Award at our 20thAnniversary Wings of Hope for Melanoma gala on October 20, 2016 in New York.
If you are interested in joining me and Mike at this event October 20th in New York City here is the link for tickets - https://melanoma.ejoinme.org/WingsNY16
Although President Carter has a conflict on that date and won’t be able to attend in person, he is going to film a short video for us that will be shown at the event and used for other marketing/fundraising purposes for the MRF.
I wanted to share a few things, first the background of how we were able to connect with President Carter. Over the summer, Sara Selig, MD introduced Kyleigh LiPira, Director of Individual Giving at MRF to Robin Legg, a donor who lost her vibrant 25 year old daughter, Meredith Legg Stapleton to ocular melanoma. Meredith was an advocate during her treatment. You can see her story here on “Dear 16 year-old-me”
. She is the 22 year-old.Robin is probably one of the most passionate people I have met. She is determined to not have her daughter’s death be the end of her story and wants to get out the message of prevention for not only ocular melanoma but cutaneous as well.
Meredith was married to a relative of Jimmy Carter and Robin truly believed that if we could just get a letter to him that maybe he would consider doing something for us. Kyleigh and Robin came up with the idea of honoring President Carter with a Courage Award at our anniversary gala. Together, they wrote the letter and Robin was able to get it to President Carter’s secretary. After weeks of calls following up on our letter we finally heard back last week that President Carter would accept the award and welcome us to the Carter Center to film on 10/12! This is a hug win for the MRF.
On 10/12 MRF will live stream parts of the interview through the MRF social media channels and then send out video clips via e-blast to MRF constituents. In November, we will use video clips again to help drive donations for #GivingTuesday.
We are really excited about having President Jimmy Carter as our advocate and it is truly a win for the MRF and the community we serve.
I hope to see you in NY,
Cheryl