This story appeared in the HOLIDAY 2005 edition of MATTERS MAGAZINE.

Members of the CHS Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Club.
Photo by Karen Duncan

In The Pink Club

Students fighting the good fight

by Sarah Friedman

Columbia High School is home to a plethora of well-respected, active clubs. There’s the Key Club, Kids for Kids, and the American Civil Liberties Union. Three years ago, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Club was added to this venerable roster.

The group focuses on breast cancer awareness and raising funds for the established Komen Foundation. The innovative action of focusing on an issue as sensitive and silenced as breast cancer has attained the club much notoriety and support from the community, and continues to attract deserved attention and consideration.

2002 marked the commencement of this exceptional club, founded by members of the 2003 graduating class. Starting a club is no easy task. It involves getting approval by the principal, finding a teacher advisor, advertising the club throughout the school, and several other tedious steps. After the OK was granted the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Club was ready to go.

The Komen Foundation began in 1982, when Nancy Goodman Brinker vowed to be proactive in a fight against breast cancer; a fight which her sister Susan Goodman Komen had just recently lost. At the time, little was discussed or known about the disease, which is estimated to affect more than 270,000 women in the year 2005. The Komen Foundation is ingrained in its ideals of funding breast health education, providing breast cancer screening tests, aiding treatment programs, backing medical research, and spreading awareness throughout the globe. The success in achieving each of these goals is impressive. In 2001, Worth magazine named the Komen Foundation one of "America’s Best 100 Charities" out of a pool of 819,000. Since then, great accomplishments for the foundation have only multiplied, as evidenced by its gross amount raised of $140,463,517 in 2004.

Such success would not be possible without a thousands of motivated and dedicated volunteers and affiliates throughout the country. Columbia High School stands strong and accomplished as one of the only high school chapters in the North Jersey Affiliate, and among them, one of the most thriving. In fact, at this year’s Komen Race For the Cure (an annual benefit run in New York City), the Komen Foundation recognized Columbia as the second largest high school club. These triumphs have served as spurring motivators for the incoming year.

Such wide-scale accomplishments branch from the solid efforts made locally by the Columbia Komen Club. Over the past two years, the club has brought in a host of knowledgeable speakers from the Cancer Society, has held discussion forums after school, has made information pamphlets available, and has held numerous bake sales to keep the club at a financial peak. At the end of each year there has been an impressive fundraising benefit banquet, which has consistently been successful in raising money and involving the whole community.

This year the club is prepared to maintain the Komen Club’s reputable standing and to bring the club to new heights. While 20 active members are graduating this year, there is an onslaught of interest: On the first day of school, at Columbia’s Clubs Fair, seventy-five freshman expressed interest in the club. The Columbia Komen Club will continue to strive and to contribute to the crucial fight against breast cancer.

For more information on how you can help the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, visit www.komen.org.

Sarah Friedman, a student at Columbia High School, is a contributing writer to Matters Magazine.