This year, as part of the global breast cancer awareness campaign, the Estée Lauder Companies and the ICA partnered with ZER4U chain of flower shops to launch the sale of a unique product to promote breast cancer awareness, under the tagline: "Let's beat breast cancer. Stronger together".
The flower that will be sold is the Amaryllis, a perennial flower with pink petals, which goes into hibernation all summer and blooms each year as fall approaches, close to International Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The fact that this flower blooms in pink, particularly in October, will help remind women and men to go get themselves checked by undergoing a simple breast screening test. Early detection is the most effective means of curing breast cancer, leading to a 90% recovery rate.
The flowers will be available for a reasonable price of 20 ILS at all zer4u franchises across Israel and on the company website at: http://www.zer4u.co.il
Zer4u will bear the delivery costs for processed orders as part of its contribution to this campaign.
100% of the proceeds will be dedicated to ICA activity.
The awareness campaign, photographed by photographer Tamar Karavan, enlisted the support of many public opinion leaders such as: Lea Koenig, Gila Almagor, Oshri Cohen, Orna Banai, Lior Raz, Ron Shahar, Magi Azarzar, Titi Aynaw, Shavit Wiesel, Meirav Miller, Michal Yanai, Liraz Charhi, Ksenia Tarantul, Shir Elmalich, Lior Narkis, Alma Dishi, Tali Oren and others.
These photos will serve the digital campaign which will accompany Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
The campaign in Israel, as mentioned, is part of an international campaign launched by Estée Lauder Companies. The late Evelyn H. Lauder established this campaign 22 years ago, and she was also a partner in devising the pink ribbon concept as well as in the establishment of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation® (BCRF). The campaign currently operates in over 70 countries and up until now has raised over 50 million dollars to support research, education and medical services around the globe: 38 million dollars of this sum has funded 152 BCRF research projects over the past 20 years.
As mentioned, the campaign aims to raise breast cancer awareness, as this is the most common cancer among women worldwide (breast cancer accounts for one out of every four cancer diagnoses in women around the globe). The funds that are raised in this campaign are channeled to research fellowships which focus on all fields of research financed by the Breast Cancer Research Foundation: cancer biology research of malignant tumors, and understanding the way cancer cells break away from the tumor and spread to vital organs such as the brain, the lungs, the liver and the bones, research addressing heredity and ethnicity and understanding the way gene mutations increase cancer risk, lifestyle and prevention research and understanding the relationship between obesity and breast cancer risk, cancer survivorship and rehabilitation research and understanding the effect of treatment on memory and cognition and the development of a tool to identify metastases based on a blood test prior to tumor growth.
In Israel, the Estée Lauder Companies Group has been working in collaboration with the ICA for the past 15 years, to promote breast cancer awareness. As part of this joint project, in recent years, various landmarks in Israel have been illuminated in pink every October, among these landmarks were: the Old City of Jaffa, the Bridge of Strings in Jerusalem, Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, The Tower of David in Jerusalem, The Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem, Haifa University, and other sites.
Oren Revah, General Manager of Estée Lauder Israel stated that "this project has one aim which outweighs everything else: to remind all Israeli women that an early detection test is potentially life-saving. This year we will sell flowers that bloom every October, and this will serve as a perfect and natural reminder of this issue. The flowers will be sold at a reasonable price and we anticipate that the Amaryllis flower will bloom in October in hundreds of thousands of households around Israel".
Yossi Cohen, CEO of Zer4u: "Zer4u chain of flower shops considers this campaign as essential and important in promoting breast cancer and early detection awareness. We were delighted to support this worthy cause, and I hope that this collaboration will indeed increase awareness of this subject among women in Israel".
According to Miri Ziv, ICA Director General, "The ICA leads the fight against breast cancer on all fronts, through its extensive activities to promote research, prevention methods, and early detection, and its efforts to enhance therapeutic modalities and provide quality rehabilitation for patients and survivors. Estée Lauder Company's longtime willingness to lend a hand and its partnering with Zer4u in support of the fight against breast cancer is to be commended and reinforces our activity from a national and international perspective".
Michal Ravid, BCA Project Manager - this year we sought to find a way to remind women to go get themselves checked, using a unique product that would continue to serve as a yearly reminder of the significance of breast screenings, and naturally of the essential need for early detection, on the one hand, as well as the importance of continuing to donate to the ICA, on the other. The flower is a different and unique concept which achieves these two objectives. This partnership with Zer4u continues the trend of collaborating with other companies in support of this unique awareness month, which is observed worldwide.
Click here for further information about this campaign and additional photos