LONDON: The Saudi cancer-awareness initiative 10KSA has gained international recognition as it prepares for its latest campaign event on Dec. 8.
In a heartfelt article published this week on the website of the UK Parliamentary Society for Arts, Fashion and Sports, the organization’s director and chairperson, Rebecca Riofrio, praised 10KSA for its upcoming “Lavender in the Desert” campaign event, how it is educating people in Saudi Arabia and beyond about cancer awareness and prevention, including the importance of early detection, and its efforts to end the stigma surrounding discussion of the disease.
“There are conversations that arrive with the weight of a quiet revelation,” she wrote. “Mine came this week, when my business partner, Othman Al-Omeir, rang to tell me about a force in Saudi Arabia I needed to see for myself. Not a project. Not a campaign. A movement.”
10KSA, led by Princess Reema bint Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the US, was founded in 2015 with a focus on breast cancer awareness. It has since expanded into a broader initiative that encourages people to schedule screenings and preventive tests to combat what it describes as a “modern-day plague” that in 2022 alone affected nearly 20 million people worldwide who were diagnosed with some form of the disease.
