Dropping "Awareness" and Our New Mission!
FOR THE LAST 20 YEARS, OUR MANTRA HAS BEEN ART. EDUCATION. AWARENESS. ACTION.
Vans Warped Tour - 2012
Along with our mission statement, these are the keywords we live by:
Art is who we are and our way of communicating about a complex issue.
Education is our mission: it’s how we spark change.
Action is the passion that creates a future free from breast cancer.
You might be thinking, “...but you skipped Awareness!?” We did, and it wasn’t a mistake.
As we listen to our community and the cancer space over the last few years, we’ve noticed an ever-growing movement of frustration around “awareness.”
Maybe you’ve felt it too. The wave of pink every October raises awareness and promises a cure with no acknowledgment of why breast cancer cases are on the rise. Then another October comes...and more “awareness” dressed in pink.
We aren’t knocking any efforts to stop this disease, but we wouldn’t be Keep A Breast if we didn’t challenge the status quo when necessary!
We keep hearing from survivors over and over that they are sick and tired of awareness already. That there’s enough awareness and pink ribbons out there, and they want a cure! More specifically, they want action to stop breast cancer and the loss of life caused by it, not just another pink ribbon.
Many years ago, alongside our friends at Breast Cancer Prevention Partners, we started to change our language to RECOIN “Breast Cancer Awareness” month to “Breast Cancer Prevention Month”, with the goal of shifting that awareness into action.
After 20 years of raising awareness around breast cancer,
Keep A Breast is officially dropping the word “awareness” from our mantra.
And it feels good!
Times change and we do too. And we continue to evolve to serve you. Because “awareness” hasn’t been enough for a long time, and it certainly isn’t now. It’s time to get to the heart of it all, because the last part of our mantra is Action, and we stand by it. That’s where things get real, and real change happens.
START THE SHIFT FROM AWARENESS TO MORE ACTION
BY TAKING ACTION FOR PREVENTION
Vote with your dollars and learn about pinkwashing.
We are not perfect here, and it’s not about perfection. We partner with many brands that can do better and helping do that is of our mission. We promise to evaluate our partners, investments, and practices annually to make sure we practice transparency of ingredients, partner terms, and more.
Make the choices you can in your everyday life to lower your risk of developing breast cancer. This can be HARD, and this is another place where stressing about being perfect doesn’t serve us. We truly believe that companies need to change, and this burden shouldn’t be all on us as customers, because getting cancer isn’t the fault of the individual. However, until companies clean up their act, we can make some choices to protect ourselves. Not everyone has access to organic food and non-toxic beauty products, and we can’t control everything we’re exposed to. Check out our list of a dozen things you can do to lower your risk and see how you can incorporate a few based on your unique lifestyle.
Download the Keep A Breast App and share it with 8 friends.
This one is pretty straightforward and super impactful! According to John Hopkins Medical Center, 40% of diagnosed breast cancers are detected by women who feel a lump. The KAB app walks you through a self examination every month, schedule your self-check, and provides an accessible, direct connection to telehealth professionals.
(We’re super proud of it, can you tell?)
WE’RE FOCUSED ON EVERYTHING WE DO TO BE ROOTED IN CONCRETE ACTION FOR CANCER PREVENTION.
This is our purpose, our calling.
We’re happy for more awareness to be happening where it needs to be, but for us, the future is about action.
Because prevention is still the cure.
NEW MANTRA. NEW MISSION.
As 20 years of Keep A Breast have come and gone, we are evolving our mantra and mission to better represent who we are and where we're going. While our focus continues to be on prevention, we believe our mission needs to reflect a more diverse population and the real life impact breast cancer has on individuals and families.