LONDON: The Saudi cancer-awareness initiative 10KSA has gained international recognition as it prepares for its latest campaign event on Dec. 8.

In a heartfelt article published this week on the website of the UK Parliamentary Society for Arts, Fashion and Sports, the organization’s director and chairperson, Rebecca Riofrio, praised 10KSA for its upcoming “Lavender in the Desert” campaign event, how it is educating people in Saudi Arabia and beyond about cancer awareness and prevention, including the importance of early detection, and its efforts to end the stigma surrounding discussion of the disease.

“There are conversations that arrive with the weight of a quiet revelation,” she wrote. “Mine came this week, when my business partner, Othman Al-Omeir, rang to tell me about a force in Saudi Arabia I needed to see for myself. Not a project. Not a campaign. A movement.”

10KSA, led by Princess Reema bint Bandar, the Saudi Ambassador to the US, was founded in 2015 with a focus on breast cancer awareness. It has since expanded into a broader initiative that encourages people to schedule screenings and preventive tests to combat what it describes as a “modern-day plague” that in 2022 alone affected nearly 20 million people worldwide who were diagnosed with some form of the disease.

For the Lavender in the Desert event on Monday, Dec. 8, 10KSA is calling on people in the Kingdom and anywhere else in the world to come together and form a lavender ribbon as a symbol of collective compassion and solidarity.

Riofrio described the 10KSA movement as “an act of collective mercy” that “refuses to sit quietly,” instead boldly confronting the stigma of cancer “in broad daylight.”

She recalled the powerful sight of nearly 9,000 women who formed a human cancer-awareness ribbon in 2015, setting a Guinness World Record. Organized by 10KSA under Princess Reema’s leadership, it was a moment that continues to inspire an ongoing commitment in the Kingdom to cancer awareness.

“What has remained with me is not simply the sight of nearly 9,000 women forming a human awareness ribbon — though the image still tightens the chest — but the shift in consciousness it ignited,” Rifrio wrote.

“Almost a decade later, the impact of that moment still echoes through the Kingdom — not as a memory but as a mandate to continue.”

Rifrio also serves as executive director of the Creative Women Forum Saudi Arabia, and last month delivered the opening speech at its annual event in Riyadh.