News from The American Cancer Society SCV Unit – January 2017

 Welcome to 2017!  Each New Year predictably brings with it a slew of self-appointed resolutions, many aimed at getting healthier and realizing more joy and meaning out of life.
Among the most rewarding activities you can participate in, one that can foster life-changing benefits for people battling a critical illness, while bolstering your own heart and soul, is volunteering for a non-profit humanitarian cause.
American Cancer Society volunteerism provides an excellent opportunity for doing this. You join the fight against cancer, give support and share awareness throughout your community, and caringly help men, women and children realize longer lives. Another plus: In becoming a volunteer you will also garner deep friendships with others sharing this noble cause.
People volunteer out of love, stated Sandy Ends, an ACS SCV Unit volunteer, Leadership Council member, and Mission Delivery Lead.
“We do not get paid, as it’s not a job for us,” explained Ends, a 17-year breast cancer survivor and 16-year ACS volunteer.  “Our reward is ‘paying back and paying forward.’ We do what we do because we are survivors, because we want everyone to be a survivor, because we want to eradicate cancer, because we have had a friend or relative touched by cancer, because we have lost dear loved ones to cancer, because it is in our hearts to do it.”
Ends, a longtime human resources director, fervently devotes her volunteer energies to national ACS projects, resources, trainings, councils and programs, primarily for the Reach to Recovery (breast cancer) program.
She encourages community members to consider becoming ACS volunteers in the 2017 and learn what she has appreciably realized.
“It is the greatest pleasure, and really a calling, to serve your community by raising awareness and offering support and encouragement,” she said.
Together with its millions of supporters, the American Cancer Society saves lives and creates a world with less cancer and more birthdays. It does so by helping people stay well, helping people get well, finding cures, by fighting back. More than 15.5 million American men, women and children with a history of cancer are alive today thanks to cutting-edge research and new treatments, many which have come through thanks to the American Cancer Society.
Through supporting the American Cancer Society we can work toward accomplishing two goals: Facilitate in those survivorship numbers going up, and work together toward seeing the number of newly diagnosed cases plummet!
Finding your volunteer niche within the American Cancer Society is easy. Start by calling 661-298-0886 option 3. You may also go online to www.cancer.org
Visit the local ACS office at 25020 Avenida Stanford # 170, Santa Clarita, 91355. Open Monday through Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The ACS’ 24-hour number, through which you can get cancer information day and night, is 800-227-2345.