Charity founder tackling loneliness in people with cancer through letter writing
Charity founder tackling loneliness in people with cancer through letter writing
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A charity founder hopes to “reduce loneliness and isolation” among people living with cancer through a 24-hour letter writing marathon for World Cancer Day. Alison Hitchcock, 56, is co-founder of From Me To You Letters, a charity supporting people living with cancer by sending them letters, and has created a 24-hour event to mark World Cancer Day which falls on February 4.
The 24-hour Letter Writing Marathon hopes to bring together writers from across the globe via an online video link to spend an hour of their day writing and sharing letters in a bid to combat isolation among people living with cancer. “This is an opportunity for us all to come together and just be part of something where we are thinking about people who have cancer, but we’re actively doing something to support them as well,” Ms Hitchcock, from Blandford in Dorset, told the PA news agency.
“I think the marathon is a real, tangible proof of the number of people who we’ve been able to connect with and who have wanted to connect with what we do.”. She hopes the free event, which will take place from 9am on Saturday February 8 until 9am on Sunday February 9, will help people realise they are “making a difference” to people living with cancer.
“What we hope is that often when people want to write to somebody who’s living with cancer they just don’t know how to go about it, so this will enable them, will give them the tools to do that (write a letter),” Ms Hitchcock said. “If it just means that they then reach out to maybe an auntie or a cousin or a dad with a letter or a card… then that will have just started to reduce some of the loneliness and isolation that a cancer diagnosis can bring.”.
