Celebrating a successful November
There have been so many highlights this Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month. Read on to find out more!
Now that’s a wrap on Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month, we’d like to say a huge thank you to everyone who rallied together to support us this November. Whether you’ve fundraised, shared the symptoms of pancreatic cancer far and wide, or arranged for your home or a landmark to light up purple – your impact has made a huge difference.
Fundraising
November has been full of excitement in the fundraising community. Together, you raised £373,000.
You wrapped up warm in the cold November weather and walked, ran, cycled or swam for our 100 Miles challenge. Some of you brave supporters even took to the skies, skydiving in honour of loved ones and everyone affected by pancreatic cancer. You also fundraised your own way, from setting up raffles to throwing tea parties, thank you so much for your support.
Purple Lights
This November, Purple lights for pancreatic cancer saw even more light ups than 2024, with over 200 buildings and homes across the UK light up purple to pay tribute to those affected by pancreatic cancer. From Macduff to Belfast, Carmarthenshire to Newquay, our purple glow stretched across all the nations. Thank you to everyone who got involved this year.
St PancrEas
For the ninth year, we’ve staged a station takeover and put the ‘e’ into St PancrEas International. With nearly 40 per cent of Londoners admitting to mispronouncing the station as ‘St PancrEas’ some or all of the time, it presented the perfect way, once again, to draw attention to the disease on World Pancreatic Cancer Day.
Not only that, through our collection in the evening at the station we raised over £3,300!
A huge thank you to St Pancras Highspeed for making this possible and everyone who made the evening so special, including our amazing volunteers. An extra special shout out to Popchoir, who filled the station with well-loved pop songs, bringing a fun atmosphere to the evening.
Volunteering
From connecting with your local communities and arranging purple light ups to reaching out to media outlets to help raise awareness, November has been a huge month for our volunteering and participation.
We’ve seen creative ideas such as Mark who released a song on World Pancreatic Cancer Day and some fantastic awareness stands. In Scotland, Wendy and Ian Thomson held multiple awareness stands in supermarkets and hospitals throughout the month, helping to raise awareness amongst the public.
They also found time to attend the Scottish Parliament Members’ Debate in Edinburgh. We’re glad to have such great supporters in the north!
PCAM across the UK
We’re always working hard to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer in all nations, but we’ve had a busy November highlighting Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month.
On World Pancreatic Cancer Day, the Scottish Parliament held a debate, joined by eight supporters. Several MSPs attended and referenced our work including our funding for the breath test and the Family History Checker. Our colleagues were able to have a conversation with the First Minister of Scotland to further raise awareness of pancreatic cancer.
We collaborated with Clan Cancer Support to raise awareness in the northeast of Scotland by hosting joint stands at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and creating a series of blog posts with the local CNS team.
Clan offers emotional and physical support to anyone impacted by cancer across the entire north-east of Scotland, Moray, Orkney and Shetland. The stands saw some good engagement from patients and health professionals alike and the collaboration also got picked up by some local news outlets which was a great win.
In Wales, our colleagues attended awareness stands ran by Clinical Nurse Specialist teams in West Wales and in Cardiff who spoke with the public about pancreatic cancer symptoms and how Pancreatic Cancer UK can support them. The stand presented a special opportunity to hear about some of the public’s experience of pancreatic cancer which was incredibly striking.
Making the headlines
Our media reach in November was vast. In just one month, we had:
- Over 300 pieces of coverage across the UK (and counting!)
- St PancrEas and the wonderful PopChoir featured on ITV London’s evening news programme on World Pancreatic Cancer Day
- One of our fantastic Specialist Nurse’s, Nicci Murphy drafted a Letter to the Editor of UK national and regional papers, highlighting the symptoms of pancreatic cancer, the support we offer and our recent £1.1 million investment to progress a world-first breath test for pancreatic cancer to a national clinical trial. The letter has been published in over 45 publications so far.
- We secured several interviews with supporters and media outlets, including BBC South East Today, BBC Somerset, PA Media, which is the largest newswire in the UK, and the Metro, and we made headlines throughout the month, appearing on BBC News Online (twice), Daily Mirror, The Independent, The Argus, Somerset Gazette, ITV London, Yahoo UK and much more.
