September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

Every year in September, CCI and SIOP members and the whole community of childhood cancer champions, advocates and supporters honour the children and young people battling cancer and the families who care for them and survivors.

Traditionally, during this month, our community encourages iconic buildings, historic landmarks, monuments, bridges, and natural wonders to be turned GOLD, either by lighting them up in gold or by decorating them with huge gold ribbons.To kick off this year’s campaign, we are delighted to announce the first landmarks of 2021: BT Tower, London, UK (confirmed: 1 September 2021), Fifty-Nine Canadian Landmarks Lit Gold for Childhood Cancer and more to follow!

And this year, following a proposal from CCI and CCI-Europe, we decided to go a bit further. Each week of September, our community will address a different topic through engaging content on social media; please find some key elements of the initiative and how to participate below:

• Week 0 (August 21-31): ‘Warm-up’ days 
• Week 1 (September 1-5): Research & Innovation 
• Week 2 (September 6-12): Treatment
• Week 3 (September 13-19): Psycho-social aspects
• Week 4 (September 20-26): Survivorship
• Week 5 (September 27-30): Wrap-up and regional focus areas

During each week, we encourage our members to: Publish articles, news, events on social media; Produce video clips (maximum 2 minutes) and send to info@siop-online.org; Specifications: SIOP professional and CCI parent or survivor matched by region speaking together about the week’s topic on issues of most relevance in their daily realities. We will then try to make a film of all the clips which will be shared during the last week of September. We encourage you to liaise with your SIOP Continental President or Regional CCI Heads to receive further guidance on participating and ensure that our voice remains strong, and we can keep the theme of childhood cancer in the spotlight.

OTHER ACTIVITIES Also, do not miss out on our other activities and mark them in your agenda: August 27, 2021: Press Release - COVID-19 in children with cancer: Severe disease and disrupted treatment link to article here) September 1, 2021: Launch of the new SIOP blog on which we will post Gold September content throughout the month September 15, 2021: SIOP – St. Jude Global ‘Gold September’ 2021 Policy Webinar “Caring for childhood cancer in refugee and displaced populations”: More detailed information on the speakers, topics and agenda can be found here September 25, 2021: WHO Global Initiative for Childhood Cancer in Tokyo 2021 “WHO GICC in Tokyo 2021”: More detailed information on the speakers, topics and agenda can be found here September 30, 2021: SIOPE-MAC Webinar for Gold September: Childhood Cancer Awareness Month: Register here for free #SOCIAL MEDIA Follow SIOP on Twitter , Facebook and Instagram and share your activities with us by mentioning @WorldSIOP and the below suggested social media #  – we will retweet/repost and include the event in our special Gold September Newsletter at the end of the month! Suggested Twitter and Facebook tags #goldseptember #supportkidswithcancer SPECIAL GOLD SEPTEMBER IMAGES SIOP is happy to share our special Gold September Images – illustrations of survivor stories featuring the Gold Ribbon, courtesy of Tina Bouffet! Feel free to use these images in your own communications channels.