Relay for Life of Second Life

Relaying is made up of so many different facets but one is awareness.
A woman came to ACS Island and found me at my desk. She was looking for information. She told me about a lump she had found, she said she was nervous, and also embarrassed and just wanted some information. I said “go to the doctor”. Seemed simple enough to me but she stalled around so I asked “want to talk to doctor or nurse?” She instantly said “OH! YES! PLEASE!” Now I know that a doctor or nurse walks a thin line with giving advice but I also know they know, better than I, what that line is and this visitor needed more, was looking for more than my answer. So, I asked on our Volunteers’ chat group if a nurse was available and like an answer to the visitor’s prayer and mine, Mercedes Lassard answered the call. I don’t know how the conversation went from there as I left, my part was over but Mercedes told me later that the woman was deathly afraid of needles. They had talked, Mercedes answered a few questions; asked a few questions but, the long and short of it was that Mercedes was able to say what was needed to get this woman to push pass her fears and promised to go to the doctor.
Does she have cancer? Was her life saved?
Who knows, may never know, but you can bet that Mercedes will be tracking her down to just ask – how did it go? To do all she can to support her and offer her some accountability so she has some incentive go to that doctor appointment.
NOW THAT IS ONE AWESOME WAY TO RELAYING!
Fay

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If your interested in submitting a blog type post for RFLofSL.org (Our current theme is Heroes!) please send your entries to Madison Donnelly (For the Hero posts) or David Jacobs (For any other type). This is open to all who have experience with Relay (be it going to your very first event, or coming upto your third year on the committee), we WANT to hear about it!

Thanks,
Dave.
“Fight Back … Relay For Life”

WE ARE RELAYING!

You, the volunteers, the teams for Relay For Life of Second Life, picked up that fundraising baton and never dropped it! You are carrying it integrity and dedication. It is phenomenal to see! You show your pride in being an ACS Relay For Life of SL volunteer and your integrity in the well- planned fund raising events that reach out friendly, caring hands to the communities of Second Life. You show your dedication with your support of each other as you advertise and attend each others events. Talk about a team work! It’s just downright impressive! We are relaying and it’s a relay of sincere people who have united to achieve one goal; a goal that someone, some day will cross a finish line and yell out – “YES! WE HAVE A CURE!”

YEP, WE ARE RELAYING! And I am honored to be relaying along side you.
Fay

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If your interested in submitting a blog type post for RFLofSL.org (Our current theme is Heroes!) please send your entries to Madison Donnelly (For the Hero posts) or David Jacobs (For any other type). This is open to all who have experience with Relay (be it going to your very first event, or coming upto your third year on the committee), we WANT to hear about it!

Thanks,
Dave.
“Fight Back … Relay For Life”

Blog post from Trader1 Whiplash:

I just looked at the totals for RFL of SL 08! I am amazed and exhilarated by the generous support and enthusiasm for Relay for Life in Second Life! It is amazing!

As an original Relayer in SL, a cancer survivor ( I have Leukemia which is currently in remission after 5 months of chemo last year), a founding member of SL’s Cancer Survivors, and the voice of Relay it has been my privilege and honor to have been part of this amazing activity in SL.

There is no other activity in or out of the virtual world that compares to what we are doing here in SL. With eighty teams, more than a thousand active Team Members and untold supporters RFL of SL is by far the largest organized Virtual activity ever! If you are like me there is no better feeling than looking at the totals on the website SOAR each time you click refresh!

Being part of any charity that supports difficult medical issues brings both happiness and sorrow. I am reminded each time that I am updated on a friend or fellow relayer’s condition of the late sportscaster Jim McKay who spanned the globe to bring television viewers the constant variety of sports on ABC’s influential “Wide World of Sports,” where he told of “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”
As participants in RFL of SL we too span the globe and share the thrills and agonies but ours is in a much different arena than the slopes of the Tirol or the arm wrestling bench in Petaluma. Our arena is the one in which victory can be as simple as waking up one more day and defeat is final. I have shouted with joy as another survivor got the wonderful news that his or her cancer is in remission and have shed far too many tears to count at each blue notice, and those seem to have come all too frequently this year!

Now we enter the last month of our campaign.. the home stretch.. the run to the playoffs! If you have listened to my radio programs I have challenged my listeners to find a way to put $3.75 each week into a Kiosk.. $L1000! For the next four weeks lets all try to do at least that!

As we make our push to the final weekend let’s not forget, this is just another lap because there is no finish line for Relay for Life until there’s a cure!

Remember, Celebrate, Fight Back! Go Relay!

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If your interested in submitting a blog type post for RFLofSL.org (Our current theme is Heroes!) please send your entries to Madison Donnelly (For the Hero posts) or David Jacobs (For any other type). This is open to all who have experience with Relay (be it going to your very first event, or coming upto your third year on the committee), we WANT to hear about it!

Thanks,
Dave.

Who ever thought that writing about a passion, and a true passion at that, would be so hard? When asked to do this by Tria for a news article, the first thing that came to my mind was “500 words?! My lecturers at college are lucky if they get 500 words per year!”.. But I geuss, with something like Relay For Life, once you start, the finish comes very easily (Lets hope so).

I have found that Relay For Life of Second Life 2008 has been one of the most challenging projects I have ever been involved with. The highs, the lows, the dramas and the heroes have all made this year an emotional rollarcoster. I am often asked by those around me? Is it worth it? HELL YEAH! Cancer doesn’t stop fighting against us just because times are hard, it carries on regardless – So we have to be just as ruthless, just as commited and just as determined to beat it as it is to beat us.

I first started working with Relay For Life of Second Life back at the first event with Timeless Prototype. Working on a small stall and then marvelling the next year at his life size MG (Innocent plug) made me all the more committed that last year, I was going to do something! After talking to Jade Lily and RC Mars they asked me to join as the Design Chair. Oh boy. Coming in on a plan that was already set in stone is NOT an easy thing, so I don’t think we did too badly with the 35 sims of pure brilliance that was produced. During that year however, I made one true, everlasting and everloving friend in the 2008 Chair Fayandria Foley. Fay for me, is my hero. She, along with my grandfather (Who is currently very ill from cancer and is accepting his fate) has taught me why I Relay, why I want to, and why I should do. Fayandria is the person that I can call up in the middle of the night and moan, the person I can cry to when life is hard, and the person I can kick in the ass for being a noob, so when she told me that I almost never got to know her due to her own cancer, I broke down. Now, with so many other friends suffering from cancer, or in the process of beating it, I light a collective candle in the hope that they will all one day be cancer free and that nobody need ever hear those words, “You have cancer” ever again.

So I geuss, this hasn’t been too hard to write, and including my mission for Relay and my best friend and grandfather in it has helped me to understand – No matter what the disease, no matter what the time, money or hard work involved – Someone will be there to fight my case, shouldn’t I do the same for them?

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If your interested in submitting a blog type post for RFLofSL.org (Our current theme is Heroes!) please send your entries to Madison Donnelly (For the Hero posts) or David Jacobs (For any other type). This is open to all who have experience with Relay (be it going to your very first event, or coming upto your third year on the committee), we WANT to hear about it!

Thanks,
Dave.

We did it!

According to Fay’s calculations we broke last year’s Relay total last night! (14th June 2008)

A big THANK YOU to all who made this possible, and to those who are Relaying with us - Ya’ll rock!

A very happy,
Dave.

(Taken straight from the notecard):

**Offical RFL of SL Event Posting Form**
********************************
Please fill out all the information below to be added to the RFL Team Event Calendar. Return this notecard to Bcreative Wilde or Madison Donnelly.
Also please place the date of your event and name of your team notecard title after “RFL Team Event Form:”.
Example: RFL Team Event Form: 5/13/08 - Team Name
***********************************************************

RFL Event Title:

Team Sponsoring event:

Date:

Time:

Location:
Sim/Place Name:
SLURL:

Contact Information:

Event information:

***********************************************************
Note:
Please remember all events must be kept PG-13 even if the event is held in a Mature sim.

Thanks for the support & Go Relay!

• Do you want to make the broadest possible appeal in your fundraising efforts?
• Do you have friends who aren’t in Second Life who would financially support our RFL of SL?
• Does your team have support members who want to do more individual fundraising?

Then do we have a tool for you! Just hop on over to the RFL in SL pages at the American Cancer Society (events.cancer.org/RFLofSL) and sign yourself up for a fundraising page!

Support members of RFL of SL teams can also create and use fundraising pages.

And all of these pages can be personalized to better support your outreach and appeal efforts. There are how-to guides linked in the left-hand column.

Once a week, donations made through online donations pages will be calculated in L$ and the team totals shown here at rflofsl.org will include those amounts.

(Team captains, you already have a personal page; sign in with the email address you provided earlier. You can request a password reminder to get the randomly assigned password created when your team page was first set up. You will be able to personalize and track both your team and personal pages.)

Hey all,

Firstly, let me say - Welcome Back! slrfl.org is back online! Due to many problems relating to servers we had to work like beavers to get the Website back online. Major thanks have to go out to the Team behind getting the website back. Firstly to Jiminy Roo, with his unwavering support for Relay For Life of Second Life he enabled us to start the ball rolling on getting the site and kiosks back online. Secondly to Timeless Prototype, who, if it weren’t for him, Jiminy would have had a nervous breakdown trying to explain the finer points of servers to me and Fay! Thirdly, to Jade Lily, who supported us with getting the Kiosks back up and running. Last, but defiatly not least, to the wonderful husband and wife team of Chase Marellan and Tria Boucher. If it weren’t for these two folks, we wouldn’t have a working kiosks system or website to come back to! We owe you ALL a major THANK YOU.

Now, onto some updates:

- The long awaited Team List has been updated with all the information I have been given.
- Kiosks are back online.
- Untill further notice (When this blog post changes) rflofsl.org will redirect you all to http://integratingsl.com/ (Any questions/concerns/comments please direct to David Jacobs or Fayandria Foley)
- www.RFLofSL.org will be up SOON!
- We are RELAYING!

I am bringing to your attention that SLX has a vendor for sale from a group called Relay for Life Donation Station. This business also has store fronts where they sell these kiosk. The kiosks for sale promise the owners a 5% cut of all funds raised. Aside from NOT being afficilated with ACS or Relay the activites involed are a violation of US IRS tax codes.Â?  If you hear reports of people using these items please contact myself, Fayandria Foley, David Jacobs, or Tayzia Abattoir.

Thanks,
Fay and David
Your Chair & Co-Chair for RFL of SL ‘08

Not for much longer.

Spurred on and encouraged by your emails of concerns and frustrations we have established a RFL of SL Online Donations Chair position who is working unceasingly to “fix” the problems and “clear” the confusion. ACSJerry has the knowledge and experience to tackle the “whistling while you work” mess created and we are fortunate to have had him already volunteering in the PR Area. Please extend to him a big thank you and maybe just a few days grace to get it up and running smoothly.

Last year this program brought in just over 1,000 US dollars which was added to the RFL of SL general donation account and then the campaign total. Awesome huh? But this year the goal is 2,500 US dollars or just under 30.00 dollars per team and those donations made through a team member will be added to the RFL of SL individual teams’ totals weekly. NOW THAT IS AWESOME!

We are working on the online, off-world donation option! Don’t give up on using it to increase your team’s fundraising ability quiet yet. And again, I thank you for your continued support of Relay For Life of Second Life.

See ya in-world.
GO RELAY! GO TEAMS!
Fay

OH! Why is David wearing a dress? geeessshhh!