Saudi Princess Reema launches historic 10KSA breast cancer awareness campaign

By Saneela Jawad

“In every community you’ve got people that approve of things and disapprove of things. If you stand still you give them the power to push you down. I’d rather keep walking. Then they have to follow.”

These are the powerful words of HRH Princess Reema Bint Bandar Al-Saud in conversation with Fast Company editor-in-chief, Robert Safian, at SXSW (the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas), where she announced the launch of a breast cancer awareness campaign called 10KSA in Saudi Arabia.

The all-day, all-women event will take place in Riyadh on October 24 in Riyadh and gather an estimated 10,000 women to become ambassadors for health awareness in the Kingdom for a day of mammograms, spa and fitness activities, a mini bazaar featuring goods from local designers and educational healthcare speakers to inform people about the life-threatening disease. Participants will also form the world’s largest human pink humanitarian ribbon, breaking the previous record set in the Guinness Book of World Records. Funds raised at the event will go towards the Zahra Breast Cancer Association.

Princess Reema, a founding board member of the organization and the granddaughter of the late King Faisal Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, has been a fierce advocate for the empowerment of women in Saudi Arabia. Known for her feminist movements and campaigns, this initiative promises to be the most notable and pioneering campaign in the country.

“Let it be known that as of this day, ignorance is no longer an excuse and no woman should be left to suffer in silence,” said the Saudi Arabian entrepreneur, activist and CEO of luxury retail Alfa Intl, at the launch of the campaign.

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in Saudi Arabia and the leading cause of death for women aged 20-59. Local culture and stigma often makes it difficult for Saudi women to talk about breast self-examination and mammograms, leading to late-stage diagnoses.

“We take this dialogue to the rural areas and villages, where it is completely different, because we need kick up breast cancer as a mainstream dialogue, where there is no shame in discussing that part of the body,” said Princess Reema. “We face a lot of societal issues where a woman doesn’t want to admit illness because she doesn’t want to be discarded and replaced by another women. A lot of times these women will have illnesses that are not just breast cancer, but many others, and they just keep persevering and not admitting pain, or admitting suffering.”

This year’s campaign is also a major boost from the 2010 campaign, held in Jeddah, that brought about over 5,000 Saudi and expatriate women to create the world’s largest human pink ribbon through social networks like BBM and Facebook. “We want to be a benchmark for how do we do an event like this or any event extremely well where we have a lasting impact—it can’t be just about breaking the record,” Princess Reema said.

The 10KSA campaign has also created an inspiring video for the initiative that was first shown during Princess Reema’s keynote at SWSX. According to the 10KSA website, the film features breast cancer survivors, their doctors and family members and help educate, encourage and organize both men and women around this important issue in Saudi Arabia that needs to become a more mainstream conversation.

“The film is really made up of people who care about the cause and have been working tirelessly to make sure that breast cancer is a mainstream conversation here,” says Princess Reema. “We chose them because we wanted to make sure that we tell multiple stories, and multiple voices, and show multiple faces.”

In a conservative Muslim country like Saudi Arabia, this is another pioneering step taken by the Saudi princess to empower women, talk about crucial healthcare issues and make strides for the betterment of women. In recent years, she encouraged Saudi women to climb Mount Everest to raise breast cancer awareness and worked to get more Saudi women in the workforce.

Princess Reema says it is very important that 10KSA be a women-only event to allow them to be comfortable, engage and learn.

“Breaking the world record is really just to symbolize a moment in time,” said Princess Reema. “The actual activity that we want to happen from this is that those 10,000 women become ambassadors for health awareness, who will go out into their communities and spread the message of total health.”

To show your support for the 10KSA breast cancer awareness campaign, sign up and add your name to the virtual ribbon at www.10KSA.com.