A Fresh Chapter stands against the racial injustice experienced in the U.S. and around the globe.
Fostering diversity, inclusion, and health equity while building connections across cultures is an integral part of our mission. Since 2013, AFC has worked closely with our volunteer partners in other countries to better understand the needs of local communities while empowering diverse groups of women and men – from the U.S. and around the world – to step beyond their stories of cancer and gain the tools, support, and community to help them cope, and even thrive, in the midst of challenging circumstances.
Whether serving patients, survivors, and caregivers, or U.S. and global advocacy leaders, A Fresh Chapter’s (AFC) interactive psychosocial support experiences go far beyond the traditional support group model. As we grow, AFC is committed to ensuring that our programs and our team reflect the voices and experiences of our community.
With this in mind, in 2021, AFC has launched our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access (I.D.E.A.) Team. This team:
- Includes people representing different ages, types of cancer (patients and caregivers), stages of the disease, races, genders, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds, and religions.
- Offers those involved the opportunity to have a voice in AFC’s program design and outreach strategies while building new connections.
Our I.D.E.A. Team will be instrumental in helping us launch our Empower 2021 Workshop Series. These 60-90 minute interactive online workshops will be designed to help patients, survivors, and caregivers cope with the complicated emotions of cancer. We will focus on topics not addressed in traditional support groups and ensure workshops are inclusive and accessible to people from underserved communities. This is part of our bigger plan to scale our free, 10-week virtual Ignite Experience to ultimately reach thousands of patients, survivors, and caregivers from diverse populations, especially communities that have been disproportionately impacted by racial injustice and COVID-19.
In addition to our programmatic work, we are taking active measures to expand our team to ensure it represents the diversity of our past and future alumni.
AFC is an organization with a mission to heal the emotional scars of cancer, but we’re also an organization that believes that volunteering and serving the causes we care about helps us heal. Given our work in diverse cultures and communities – both in the U.S. and overseas – we have built a community of people who are passionate about social justice. With this in mind, we have partnered with our alumni to compile the list of diversity-focused resources below.
Thank you to our alumni, who motivate us to continue to educate ourselves, elevate diverse voices, foster a culture of action, and better serve our community. We are grateful for your support in our mission to create real and lasting change.
