Young Adult Cancer Canada > Organization > Blog

YACC welcomes a great Office Assistant

by Beth

We’ve recently hired a student from Memorial University to help out around the office. Goodness knows we’ve had a to do list probably the length of all of our arms combined, and we’re so pleased that Janine Wilson is going to help us scratch some very important things off this list.

For starters, donors for this year’s Shave for the Brave will be receiving their tax receipts much more promptly than last year! I have tried my best in the past to get these out ASAP but with the steady success of the event, this process has moved beyond a one-person job, and that’s a good thing!

Janine will also be helping out with some other important data-entry and research projects, which will contribute to the overall efficiency of the office. We think she’ll be a super member of our team here at YACC and look forward to getting to know her better! No doubt that on her second day she already knows us well enough to know how crazy we are.

Now, we may be out a lunch room after we hire our senior Fund Development person, the next big move in the books, but that’s just the kind of sacrifice we’re willing to make as we grow our operations and continue to build on our already stellar office crew (if we do say so ourselves!).

Exciting times!

Posted on Apr 28, 2009 - 10:37 AM

Volunteers light up communities

by Beth

From our board members to our fund raising crews, and our young adult advisory committee to third party event organizers, volunteers are definitely an integral part of Young Adult Cancer Canada. Without all of you, we quite literally would not be able to do what we do!

All of us at YACC want to recognize Newfoundland and Labrador’s 2009 Volunteer Week by saying a huge thank you to all of you who have “Lit up” our community here in St. John’s, as well as other communities across the province and country. And most importantly, you've brightened the way for the young adult patient, survivor, and supporter community we serve.

If you’ve ever wondered if stuffing and sealing envelopes in the office or sweeping up hair after a Shave for the Brave really makes a difference, we’re here to tell you YES IT DOES!

Thanks everyone!

Posted on Apr 28, 2009 - 10:21 AM

Facebook’s sharer cache

by Duncan

Over the past week, we've been promoting a series of videos around young adult cancer issues as a way of promoting the launch of our We Get It DVD.

One of the ways we've been getting the word out is through Facebook's Sharer function. If you scroll to the bottom of the page, you can embed some metadata in your page in order to embed a FLV video playable directly within the newsfeed.

This is super cool: based on YouTube's great Insight tool, approximately 25 per cent of all of the views thus far from this campaign have come from Facebook news feeds of those who've posted the video.

On the second day of the campaign, when we posted our second video, I ran into a small problem: I hadn't updated the metadata, and Facebook seemed to cache the information from the previous day's video.

After some Googling, I couldn't find a solution to the issue. So rather than passing the canonical URL for the page to Facebook, I tried passing the 301 redirected page we've setup at fyacc.ca for Twitter short URLs.

And, that solved it: Facebook grabbed the updated metadata.

Posted on Apr 22, 2009 - 03:14 PM

Brave new media

by Duncan

A century ago, you could count on one hand the number of ways you could communicate with other people.

Today, a new form of communication appears with surprising regularity. The latest to start to break into the mainstream seems to be Twitter. It's limited to 140 characters, so this post won't come close to fitting, but it's well suited to use on cell phones. And while I’ve never really gotten past the titles of McLuhan’s works, I do know that his foresight is something we have yet to fully understand today.

The other really great thing is that allows for personal mass communication (a bit of a contradiction). It's more public facing than Facebook, but still allows for personal communication.

Young Adult Cancer Canada's goal is to best reach young adults in Canada dealing with cancer. And, given the increasing migration of young adults away from traditional media, Twitter looks like it might offer the opportunity to reach that target audience. I might be an extreme example but I very rarely watch broadcast TV, I listen to my iPod in the car, I use ad-blocking software on the web, and I read most of my news online.

We're hoping to connect a whole lot of Canadians to the launch of our DVD, We Get It, and Twitter's going to play a role in this launch. So, we'd love to have you follow us on Twitter as we explore this brave new media.

Posted on Apr 14, 2009 - 01:55 PM

Four days in Vancouver

by Karine

I just spent the past four days in Vancouver. Not only did I get to appreciate the beautiful scenery, but I got to meet with psychosocial partners across the country to discuss survivorship, transitions and transformations. This discussion took place at the Canadian Association of Psychosocial Oncology (CAPO) Conference. Every year, CAPO meets and puts the focus on a different topic.

By reuniting professionals and community-based organization from every province, CAPO prjovides incredible networking opportunities as well as access to what is done elsewhere. I had the opportunity to hear keynote speakers talk about survivorship and research, physical activity, and psychotherapeutic techniques to help survivors. We also had access to a variety of workshops on different topics. For example, I attended a presentation about research and clinical developments in professionally facilitated online support groups and I learned about Younger and Wiser, the support group for young women with breast cancer in Winnipeg, Manitoba. I also got the great pleasure to attend the presentation of a member of the YACC family, Shalimar Manuel, talk about Thryvorship: Exploring the transitions and transformations inherent in the young adult thyroid cancer journey (the subject of her thesis). Very interesting and so inspiring to see a survivor talk about survivorship!

The emphasis of the conference was not on the young adult reality, but interest in young adults was definitely part of the conference. Norma D'Agostino, Lynne Robinson, Kim Edelstein, and I had prepared a workshop about young adults. Our main goal was to bring together clinicians and researchers and allow them to share their own experiences with YA initiatives, identify current practices, understand barriers, and learn from each other so that we could enhance program development and foster national collaborations. The workshop was very well attended (more than 24 people) and was very stimulating. Like many survivors, professionals working with and for young adults are isolated. At the end of the workshop, we wrote down our emails so we can better communicate together.

The CAPO conference was followed by Canadian Psychosocial Oncology Partners (CPOP) meeting, a one-day meeting to help build connection between professionals in oncology across Canada. Canada is a big country and the global knowledge is much greater than what we actually have access to so it was great to make more connections.

CPOP is working on creating a website where the psychosocial community can come together to share and gain knowledge. Our presence at that meeting assures young adults are considered and their voices heard. Our inputs are always welcomed and actually expected. We should have access to the website in the next couple of months. For YACC, this will be a great opportunity to promote and work on our programs, and to connect with potential researchers and collaborators. We say two heads are better than one, well imagine 100 heads! Scary picture, but amazing resources!

I'm now back in Newfoundland; I missed my new city of adoption. It's time to get to work on some of those new ideas!

Posted on Apr 08, 2009 - 02:24 PM