During this Cancer Awareness Month, #CycleForGold was born out of a simple act - an 11-year-old girl who cycled 1000kms over the course of a month. The campaign not only poses a collective challenge to the community to cycle 80,000kms, 1km for every child affected by cancer in India, but it is also raising funds for 500 covid-affected children with cancer.
CanKids KidsCan realised that at this stage of the pandemic, children have abandoned their treatment as they are unable to make it to cancer care centres. An increase in cases of relapse, children coming in with more advanced stages of the disease, and an even sharper rise in the number of newly-registered patients failing to even commence treatment was seen. Families who have lost their livelihood are in dire need of full support for treatment and most hospitals have exhausted their annual budgets of support.
With the impending 3rd wave expected to affect children in a bigger way, CanKids came up with a cycling challenge to both raise funds and engage with their community. Participants were invited to cycle to raise awareness and team up with donors to create supporting fundraisers on GiveIndia Fundraisers.
By pledging to cycle a certain number of kilometers, an individual can support as many children as they can. The organisation reached out to their corporate partners for employee engagement, and to their volunteer base to build their own teams and raise funds.
Team CanKids’ advice for other NGOs is to adopt a peer-to-peer model and reach out to inner circles first to create a ripple effect. “Have a good communication strategy and don’t be afraid to experiment- you never know where a Whatsapp message may reach and may even go viral. Try to find people or organizations who can amplify your message and collaborate as much as possible. Give your donors something to do beyond just donating money, create a challenge”, says Poonam Bagai, Founder Chairperson, CanKids KidsCan.
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