Coming Together: Comikaze, Keep-A-Breast, Marc and Bridget Silvestri

Have you ever wondered why people, celebrities in particular, support the causes they do?  Why they speak up about them? Give time and/or money to them?  The cause may be worthy but with so many worthy causes why do they chose the one you hear about?

Well Marc and Bridget Silvestri are supporting a cause and while, from prior interactions with them, I know they are both big hearted people, learning why this cause means so much to them brings it all back down to earth.

What cause? Why am I bringing it up now? Breast cancer awareness, and more specifically a charity auction that will be taking place at Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo this coming weekend 11/1-3/2013 in Los Angeles.

Keep A Breast (KAB), http://keep-a-breast.org, aims at bringing breast cancer awareness to a younger audience.  And their mission statement puts this in the clearest of terms:

The Keep A Breast Foundation™ is the leading youth-focused, global, nonprofit breast cancer organization. Our mission is to eradicate breast cancer for future generations. We provide support programs for young people impacted by cancer and educate people about prevention, early detection, and cancer-causing toxins in our everyday environment.

Personally I find this to be brilliant.  Why? I remember when I was younger I could only reach the people I knew, or the ones in my immediate neighborhood.  We didn’t have cell phones, the internet and by extent of no internet we had no social media.  Today it’s a different world.  And if organizations such as KAB can reach these younger generation the impact they can have as they go viral through social media can be world changing even though they start out at a grass roots, community level.

Where our my generation has been slowly making in roads into breast cancer detection and contributing factors, these next generations have the potential to eradicate it within our life time.  Notice I am not saying within their lifetime, I truly believe that advances will only accelerate as these next generations jump on board and have information and educations spread through their networks which have a global reach.  For this reason I think that KAB has taken a brilliant approach.  Reach out, education, empower and enable these next generations and see change at grow to a global level at an unprecedented pace.

But I have drifted away from where I started.  Why do celebrities support the cause(s) they do.  Bridget Silvestri shared through a blog post at http://keep-a-breast.org/blog why this cause is so important to her and Marc.  Here is an excerpt from the post (which I do highly recommend you read in full for yourself)

About four years ago, my best friend Mary Ellen was diagnosed with breast cancer and the BRCA1 gene. At the time of diagnosis, she was in her 30’s, working a full time corporate job and married with two boys ages six & eight, but everything changed that day. She decided to be very proactive and had a double mastectomy, oophorectomy & chemo. Her type of cancer was so aggressive that the specialist told her even after all the surgeries were successful that now…we wait. If after three years it hasn’t come back you’re gonna survive this, if it comes back before three years…odds are, you won’t.

I will say I have been fortunate in not having had anybody close to me go through this.  But the story that Bridget shared is so familiar, having friends share similar tales of their friends or family members dealing with decisions such as this.  Of the fear whenever a lump is found until it is diagnosed as either non-cancerous or a benign tumor.  So after reading Bridget’s story it is so understandable why she and Marc would through their names behind this charity event.

But it doesn’t stop there.  What about Shaney Jo Darden, the founder of KAB?  What drove her?  Why not just support one of the established breast cancer charities?  The answer to that is in bits and pieces of various interviews but the on place where most of those bits and pieces seem to have been pulled together was the info page on facebook for the https://www.facebook.com/KeepABreast/info page.  Here is just one of the excerpts from that page (which I do recommend you read for yourself as there is much more information than just this excerpt there) that stood out to me:

In 1999, Shaney and Mona (Mukherjea- Gehrig) learned that a young friend and artist had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Shaney knew she wanted to raise awareness in support her friend. Yet as she looked to existing breast cancer charities for ideas and inspiration, she found groups that were geared towards older women. Nothing resonated with the creative energy of action sports culture. She decided to stick with Modart’s model of bringing people together through progressive art.

The result was Keep A Breast, a unique art concept developed by Shaney and Mona to capture and communicate the physical and emotional challenges of breast cancer. Shaney enlisted a group of female volunteers, and wrapped their upper torsos in strips of plaster-soaked gauze. Once hardened and removed, these white plaster forms were distributed to Modart artists, to be used as blank canvasses. The result was a series of customized breast casts.

As you can see both stories started by somebody they knew being impacted by breast cancer.

Ok! Ok! Enough of my going on about why KAB’s approach makes so much sense to me, let’s get on to how Marc and Bridget Silvestri are supporting this organization.   Well if you went and read Bridget’s story you would know that Bridget’s breasts (or as they have been saying on facebook … boobies) have been cast and Marc is the artist drawing on Bridget’s boobies, I mean breast cast.  Over the course of this week Marc and Bridget will be sharing sneak peeks at the WIP all leading up to Stan Lee’s Comikaze where you can purchase raffle tickets to win the finished piece. (One place to see more of these sneek peeks is on the Marc Silvestri Fan Page on Facebook)

Keep A Breast will have it’s Traveling Education Booth on-site along with a mini breast cast exhibition featuring Bridget Silvestri/Marc Silvestrti and R.H. Stavis/Calero. Breast casts will be exclusively on display and will be raffled off for $5 raffle tickets at Comikaze only. Come by and support!

Did you need one more reason to get yourself to Stan Lee’s Comikaze Expo?