The Worsening World Economy and Sarcoma Advocacy
An ESUN Article
The near collapse of the worldwide financial industry that happened so rapidly during the last few weeks caught hundreds of millions of people off-guard. It will take years to offset the impact of the loss of the trillions of dollars that occurred during the week of October 6th, even if the attempts by major governments to shore up their banks manage to reestablish some degree of confidence in them and free up credit. We have already seen shut downs of hundreds of small businesses as well as the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in medium and large scale national and multi-national firms. Mergers and more shut downs are projected and the roles of the homeless and needy are expected to swell.
The fallout from this crisis will have a profound impact on programs and services that national and local governments are able to provide to their citizens as well as those provided by philanthropic and charitable organizations. Governments, businesses, and individuals will have significantly less discretionary funds to spend and many government programs will have to be cut back or eliminated.
Over 55 organizations are listed in the March 2008 Directory of Sarcoma Patient Advocacy Organizations and Foundations compiled by the International Sarcoma Patient Advocate Network (iSPAN). These organizations provide a wide and important range of services to the sarcoma community. They provide financial assistance for patients and their families, fund research studies and ancillary studies associated with clinical trials, support surgical and research fellows, fund equipment and laboratory supplies, support patients in their search for treatment options, and provide useful websites containing educational material and interactive support.
The search for donations by sarcoma advocacy groups to support their program has always been difficult. These organizations are competing with the efforts of those supporting programs in large scale cancers and other large scale diseases. They are also competing with organizations funding many important social maladies and injustices worldwide, for which we all have sympathy and compassion. All of these causes will suffer in the multi-year shadow of the current financial crisis.
It is unfortunate but prudent to project that sarcoma advocacy groups need to brace themselves for a number of years of decreased financial support. The job of these groups has just become significantly more difficult. Given this, we must redouble our efforts to help the sarcoma community.
V5N5 ESUN Copyright © 2008 Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative