Organize a local (virtual) Team Sarcoma in your area. A local Team Sarcoma is a small group of people that “Bike, Run, Walk, or Swim for Sarcoma” on one or more of the days that Team Sarcoma 2007 is biking in July in Vermont. Planning the activity can be lots of fun — getting together to discuss and select various routes, making maps, hand-outs and sign-up sheets gives all the members an opportunity to contribute to raising public awareness of sarcoma, to raising public awareness of the lack of young adults in cancer-related clinical trials, and to raising money for sarcoma-related research to help find a cure for this disease. Many of the Local Team Sarcomas plan a picnic lunch as part of their activity and many have a celebration event a few weeks afterward. In order to give the planners of local Team Sarcoma events flexibility in planning their activities, the official dates of “International Bike, Run, Walk, and Swim for Sarcoma Awareness” will be July 14-22, 2007.

Each day, the members of a local Team Sarcoma bike, run, walk, or swim, they tell us what they did and where they did it. They send us pictures of the members of their team and we will post them on the Team Sarcoma website. Take a look at some of our Virtual Team Sarcoma webpages for earlier Team Sarcoma Bike Tours to read the stories of the wonderful and creative things that people all over the world did as members of a Virtual Team Sarcoma for this initiative.  Click here to read about many of the Team Sarcoma events that were part of the Team Sarcoma 2006 Initiative — make sure to look at the slide show at the beginning of the article and click on the links at the end of the article.

Tell your family and friends what you're doing and why. By discussing sarcoma with them, you are helping increase public awareness about sarcoma and the lack of young adults in clinical trials. You can learn about sarcoma by downloading our “Sarcoma Facts” information sheet. The fact sheet is available in a variety of languages (click here). More detailed information can be found on the sarcoma page on our website. Print out and give a copy of some of this material to family and friends or e-mail them copies of these pages. Some other useful sites are found on our Sarcoma Communities link page. Make posters to put up when you ride, walk, run or swim for sarcoma. Think of creative ways to help us reach our awareness goal of raising public awareness of sarcoma. Some local Team Sarcomas have even created websites to publicize their events.

Let your local newspaper and TV news, documentary, and public service programs know about your Virtual Team Sarcoma and the nature of the Team Sarcoma 2007 effort. Share your Virtual Team Sarcoma’s story with them and share our “Sarcoma Facts” with them. If we can help you with this effort, please let us know. The local Virtual Team Sarcomas are part of the unified, coordinated statement of worldwide concern about sarcoma. The more local Team Sarcomas that participate, the more successful we will be in increasing public awareness of sarcoma.

Participants on a local Team Sarcoma are not required to raise funds for sarcoma research to participate on the team. But, we encourage the team to consider raising fund. Team members can contact some of their friends, family, and colleagues to sponsor their participation on Team Sarcoma 2007 to help raise much needed money for sarcoma-related research. Some sponsors will donate a particular amount for each mile (kilometer) you bike; others will donate a fixed amount no matter how much you bike. Click here to download a copy of our sponsor form. You can view the research studies that we have funded on our Funded Research webpage.

Send us a note as soon as possible telling us that you'd like to organize a Local Team Sarcoma 2007 and we'll help you with the details.