What is Relay?

Relay For Life is a 12 or 24 hour event that serves as the celebration of a year long fundraising effort.  These events take place in local communities as well as on college campuses.  In the fall the organizing committee beings plans for that year's event and begins actively recruiting team captain's and participants to sign up.  Participants form teams of roughly 10 to 15 members with a team captain who attends information meetings to collect information on fundraising, event details, and education/survivorship.  The teams raise money throughout the year by holding bake sales, car washes, penny wars, raffles, percentage nights at local restaurants, etc...
As the event draws near planning is in full swing! The planning committe finalizes plans for food, event location, entertainment, speakers, and just about anything else you can think of.  On the night of the event hundreds to thousands of participants converge to the event location and set up camp.  The participants take turns walking the track or field all night, playing games, listening to motivational speakers and visiting/holding an onsite fundraiser.
There are three ceremonies throughout the event that are very special to Relay For Life:

Celebrate

Celebrating the lives of friends and family who have survived cancer.  The survivors attend a survivors banquet (held either the same night or on a previous night) in their honor.  At the night of the event they are the first people to walk at the event by walking either an entire lap by themselves or they are met halfway by their caregivers.  It is a very awe inspiring event to see all of the survivors walking to show they won and they are our heroes.

Remember
Remembering the lives of friends and family who have lost their battle with cancer.  A somber ceremony usually involving the telling of the life of someone who lost their fight.  At this point in the night all outside lights are turned off and the only lighting comes from the hundreds or thousands of luminaries lit in honor or memory of loved ones.  Once all of the luminaries have been lit, the participants are asked to walk a silent lap in memory of those who are not with them anymore.  Hugs and tears are shared between participants as they not only remember who they've lost but why they are walking all night.  Typically some luminaries are set aside to spell out the word HOPE prior to the ceremony so that as the participants walk their silent lap a group of committee members change the word from HOPE to CURE because we all will always have hope that we will find a cure.

Fight Back
Fighting back against cancer.  This ceremony is held either at the very end of the night or within a few hours of the end of the event.  At this point a speaker is asked to talk about how we all can continue in the fight against cancer.  As well the event director usually announces at this point how much money the event raised and how they can continue to raise money. 

We all will continue to celebrate the survivors, remember those lost, and fight back against cancer.

Until We Find a Cure.