On Monday, November 9th, the annual Door Knock® Fundraising Campaign will be held in its 60th year.
The Door Knock® Fundraising Campaign is familiar to every household in Israel as a symbol of giving and mutual responsibility, and is an inseparable part of the Israel Cancer Association's spirit.
This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the campaign will be launched on a digital platform - Door Knock® Fundraising Campaign Online – allowing the public once more to open their hearts and reach out to cancer patients, even without knocking on their doors.
The campaign will be accompanied by a new single by Rotem Cohen and Roni Daloomi, recorded especially for the campaign on a voluntary basis. The lyrics were written by Tzlil Klifi, Naor Durani and Eran Kashi. The song, "Life Plans," was also composed by Klifi and Kashi, along with Ella Shapira and Shay Dal, two extraordinary children coping with cancer.
As is customary in the past 60 years, this year, too, the Ministry of Education is playing an important role in the fundraising campaign, and the school kids will partake in the campaign. However, due to COVID-19, the students will not be able to go from door to door, but rather will share their donation pledge on digital media. In addition, a designated Door Knock® donation website will be launched for the general public to donate through.
In a letter sent by the Ministry of Education to the school principals, the supervisor in charge of fundraising campaigns said that "the Ministry of Education see great value in the students being involved in community service, while engaging in social involvement, especially since they have additional free time during these days, and it is important to create suitable educational processes with added value. Fundraising is part of the educational agenda the Ministry of Education leads, in order to educate the students to engage in public volunteering and develop social awareness and empathy. These days, the door to door campaign cannot be carried out in its traditional structure. But it is precisely due to COVID-19 challenges that the needs of non-profit organizations have increased, therefore, the ministry decided to continue the fundraising tradition of volunteering."
Enlisted in promoting the campaign on a voluntary basis is actress and singer Meshi Kleinstein, who is featured in the association's informational video.
The Israel Cancer Association CEO, Moshe Bar-Haim: "Every year, we reach hundreds of thousands of students to lecture to them about adopting a healthy lifestyle that reduces the risk of cancer. At the same time, they are exposed to values of giving and caring for others. This year, despite COVID-19, we will not give up on teaching health education to this teen age group."
The 2020 Door Knock® Fundraising Campaign Chairman is Prof. Alexander Levitzki, scientist and Israel Prize Laureate.
The President of Israel, who traditionally serves as the campaign's patron, hosting child cancer patients in his residence each year, has launched the campaign online this year.
President Reuven (Ruvi) Rivlin is featured in a video message to the general public, calling on them to take an active part in the campaign and donate to the Israel Cancer Association. Rivlin's appeal was joined by many mayors who also filmed video messages calling on their city residents to donate to the fight against cancer. The videos will be uploaded ahead of the campaign on social media networks.
The Door Knock® Fundraising Campaign is the main source of funding for the Israel Cancer Association (ICA), which has led the fight against cancer since 1952, and acts on all fronts to reduce cancer morbidity and mortality in Israel.
There are 300,000 cancer patients in Israel today, with 30,000 new cases diagnosed each year, but thanks to research promotion and emphasis on improving means of cancer prevention, early detection and treatment, a significant increase in the number of survivors and improvement in survivors' quality of life has been registered. Each year, about 30,000 new patients are diagnosed, 450 of which are children.
The ICA's activity is made possible thanks to public donations, with no government funding whatsoever. The donations received during the campaign will go towards life-saving activities, among which are support groups for youth and adults, an emotional-mental hotline and an information hotline, supporting and funding cancer research, initiating and carrying out cancer prevention and early detection national programs, assisting in establishing, renovating and upgrading oncology units in medical centers, funding positions for cancer caretaking professionals, promoting patients and survivors' rights and improving their quality of life, promoting health and information to the general public and more.
The fight against cancer takes no time out, and is vital to the overall population in Israel. Combating cancer is of top national priority, therefore, the Door Knock® Fundraising Campaign is crucial to maintaining the ICA's myriad activities – for the patients and against the disease.
About 180 million ILS were awarded by the ICA to medical centers and health services to promote the fight against cancer.
About 40 million ILS were awarded in the past decade as perliminary financial assistance to child cancer patients and adult patients who are facing financial difficulty while actively undergoing treatments in oncology centers.
About 36 million ILS were inevsted in the past five years in purchasing equipment for oncology units and funding positions for social workers and nurses in the field of oncology as well as health care funds across the country, in order to minimize the disparities between the level of service given to population in the periphery to population in the center.
About 50 million ILS were allocated to funding hundreds of researchers by doctors and scientists in the past decade.
In 2020 alone, 22 oncologists traveled on long-term fellowships overseas to leading medical centers in the fireld of cancer, and 14 more travelled to conferences and short-term fellowships funded by the ICA.
About 19,000 screenings were conducted in 2019 as part of the mammography mobile unit project aimed at minmizing disparities in compliance rates to early cancer detection, operated by Assuta medical centers, initiated and assisted by the ICA.
About 15,000 volunteer hours were given Reach to Recovery® volunteers in 2019.
About 10 million ILS were invested by the ICA in the past decade in funding and running a network of Strong Together® support centers, established by the ICA and offering a myriad of complimentary support groups for patients and their families.
About 100,000 tutoring hours were given to child cancer patients in 2019 as part of the Hope for Life® project for catching up on schoolwork.
About 27,000 volunteer hours were given as part of the social-educational project by bursary recipient students from IMPACT! SHAHAK and HESEG who are placed in the ICA's support array.
Over 4,000 women and men from across the country participated in the 2019 Look Good, Feel Better® project.
About 10,500 patients participated in the Steps to Recovery® project in 19 medical centers across the country.
About 400 participants took part in the 2019 ICA Family Vacation at Kibbutz Shefayim recreation village.
About 370,000 preschool and kindergarten children were exposed to Sunsmart® activities, lectures and information materials about healthy lifestyle and the harmful effects of smoking.
Over 2,000,000 visits in 2019 to the ICA website, which provides comprehensive, reliable and professional information about the different types of cancer diseases, treatment, prevention methods and early detection
Over 70,000 followers on the ICA Facebook page, which serves as a platform for the ICA's messages on cancer prevenation, health lifestyle and more.