cancer charities

FCancer: Not Your Average Non-Profit

Written on May 7, 2012 at 11:28 am , by Colleen Moody

Yael (right) and her mom (left), spreading the foundation's mission statement. (Photo courtesy of FCancer)

Warning: Once you hear about Yael Cohen, 25, you’re probably going to feel a little lazy. In 2009, after watching her mother recover from breast cancer surgery Cohen heard the phrase “F Cancer” in passing, except it really stuck with her. “It’s just a sentence, but the sentiment is so natural and brave at the same time,” she told us at a visit to the FITNESS offices last week. In witnessing her mother’s experience with cancer she was shocked to find out that 90 percent of cancers are curable if caught in Stage 1. So she set out to found FCancer, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating Generation Y to learn and teach their parents about early detection. You read that right, the kids teach the parents this time around. “All kids think they know more than their parents,” said Cohen, “and with our site we give them the tools so that in this instance, they actually do.”

Cohen’s site, letsfcancer.com uses social media (which 99.9 percent of Gen-Yers are already on) to spread their digital campaigns like The Cancer Talk, where celebrities from Sophia Bush to Adrian Grenier made YouTube videos of their experiences of having The Sex Talk with their parents, how to give your parents The Cancer Talk and the importance of early detection.

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