JEDDAH: About 100 women walked for 1.5 km at King Abdullah Economic City during the “Pink Walk” breast cancer awareness march on Friday.
Before the walk — held under the Pink Lemon movement — started, participants gathered to form a human ribbon, all dressed in pink shirts.
Lebanese singer and breast cancer survivor Elissa performed and gave her testimony at KAEC as part of the movement on Saturday.
Samantha Fadlallah, creative director of LIPS Management, the company managing the Pink Lemon movement with LIV Golf, Golf Saudi, and Zahra Association, said that the company had reached out to Golf Saudi with this corporate social responsibility activity in the field of sports.
“This month is breast cancer awareness month, and this is what Pink Lemon stands for; to increase awareness about breast cancer, to push everyone for early detection; and today the Pink Walk is to show solidarity to show that we are all supporting this movement,” she told Arab News.
“We all care about each and every person who is surviving not only breast cancer but living, fighting or trying to survive certain illnesses or any other hard time they are facing,” she said.
Natalie Mamo, a Lebanese former basketball professional and the first female to represent sports in Lebanon, and one of the first to join their national team when she was 13, hosted the event.
Mamo applauded the Kingdom’s advances in women’s sports.
“I think the Kingdom is doing an amazing job in the past few years in promoting sports in every possible level, creating the first (women’s) leagues for football, basketball and for all kinds of sports,” she told Arab News.
“And seeing this event today included golf sessions to push women into golf as well — so I see that they really want to include women in everything and push them into sports.”
“I’m very impressed to see where this country has been going in the past years and to see how involved women are in the changes that have been going on as well — I’m just very happy to be part of it as a previous athlete,” she said.
Johnny Fadlallah, CEO of LIPS Management, explained the company created a movement called “Pink October” previously in Beirut, Lebanon.
“What we did today during the LIV Golf, we created this movement called Pink Lemon, and we did a movement in Beirut called Pink October previously. We believe this movement would create a buzz around this disease and that ladies have to be aware for early checkup,” he told Arab News.
He highlighted their collaboration with Zahra Breast Cancer Association as a significant part of the movement.
“To be on board as being the main supporter for this movement, we did the human ribbon and gave them some golf courses because it’s happening during the golf event,” he said.
“We are also bringing one of the biggest survivors, Elissa, tomorrow; she is going to be giving her testimony on stage with our presenter Natalie Mamo who came from Dubai especially for this movement.”
