The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, www.pancan.org, is the country's largest advocacy organization aimed at making advances with pancreatic cancer. It covers everything from helping patients with education, clinical trials, support etc to creating awareness within government to raising funds to promoting research in the health care field. The organization covers a lot of ground. One important aspect of the organization is recruting and relying on volunteers throughout the country to help with all of the above. Many cities across the country have a local "affiliate" status which means they have a significant amount of support and number of volunteers to hold regular meetings and organize large fundraisers like the PurpleStride walk which I participated in in Indianapolis last year. Most major cities and many middle size cities have an affiliate status with PANCAN. Some communities have a "community representative" which organizes events that create education and awareness. These representatives do a significant amount of work but may not have enough local support from other volunteers to make the community a fully named affiliate. In Kentucky, we do not have any affiliates but we do have some very hardworking community representation in Paducah, Lexington and Henderson. We surprisingly have not had any official PANCAN volunteer support in Louisville. The size of Louisville definitely should be able to support an affiliate chapter. The good news is a few people here in the area have individually contacted PANCAN including myself about the starting some official representation here in the area. I'm glad to say we have started a group here and Melinda Smith has stepped up to lead us and is listed as a "community representative" for Louisville. Melinda currently works as a HR manager for the Salvation Army and her story includes losing her mom to pancreatic cancer last year. One of our main goals right now is creating awareness about our group and getting our name out there. Right now, we are simply asking you to consider "liking" our official facebook page for the group. This will allow you to be made aware of any events we put on which could be a monthly meeting to discuss our initiatives or a social meet and greet to many different things. I'm also going to include Melinda's email on this post which I would encourage you to contact her to be added to our our email list which will also keep you aware of any events we hold. Getting this group started is a hope of mine because support is so needed in this area. I'd love for our area to eventually reach affiliate status where we have a strong corp of volunteers and we are able to host our very PurpleStride Louisville or better yet, PurpleStride Kentucky. The walk I did in Indy was so very uplifting and had over 800 people attend the event. The Louisville community has always been so supportive and generous and i know the support is here, we just have to get the attention needed from the many families and friends that know and understand how devastating pancreatic cancer is. Please join me in "liking" our facebook page and email Melinda if you'd like to be kept up to date with the group. Here's some of our links for the group:
Pancreatic Cancer Action Network - Louisville Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=lf#!/pages/Pancreatic-Cancer-Action-Network-Louisville/314763741901439
PANCAN Louisville Website (not very updated yet, work in progress)
http://www.pancan.org/section_get_involved/volunteer/affiliate_details.php?id=153
Melinda Smith, community representative for Louisville (email to get added to email distribution list, we will not be spamming you either): msmith@pancanvolunteer.org
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