Ryan Devlin
Ambassador
for Cancer Research UK
One in two people living in the UK will develop cancer at some point in their life. Imagine sitting down with someone and stating that fact, just in a conversation: Chances are, that between the two of us, one of us will get cancer during our lifetime.
Yet that statement would mean nothing without the keyword: Cancer. Despite decades of advancements it can still mean death for some people, and at the very least it means a battle. Cancer is a very powerful word due to its implications.
But cancer is now a word that instead of just spelling doom, holds an incredible positive power – It compels people to undertake incredible physical challenges, and it can bring people together. We are all the enemy of cancer, and if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, that makes us all allies in the fight against the Big C.
None has been better at uniting these allies than Cancer Research UK. In its aim to make sure that 3 in 4 people survive cancer by 2034, it has united fundraisers who finance research in labs. It has also united another group of people who work to beat cancer sooner a bit differently, and whom I became a part of.
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These are Cancer Research UK’s Cancer Campaigns Ambassadors, who try to beat cancer by campaigning to change public policy. They do so by speaking to MPs, and other influential policy makers, to inform them of why something should happen. For example, the Ambassadors have campaigned for plain packaging on cigarette packets, to stop sunbeds from being used by people under 18,
campaigning on obesity, and to keep local stop smoking services open which were at risk of losing funding. Most recently they campaigned for the government to, on the NHS 70th Birthday, increase the amount of money given to the NHS, so that they can increase the workforce used to diagnose cancer early. Being an Ambassador is about using the power of that single word – cancer – to influence change.
I got involved at a University of Edinburgh volunteering fair in my first year. I asked about working at a CRUK shop, instead got told about the Ambassadors, asked “How can I get involved?”, held up a plastic fish in front of the Scottish Parliament, and the rest is history. The plastic fish, which was affectionately named Gary by the Campaigns Team, was part of a display for CRUK’s obesity campaign “Scale Down Cancer”. Scale Down Cancer involved informing Members of Scottish Parliament about the 13 types of cancer caused by obesity, and why there was a desperate need for a stronger Scottish obesity strategy, including getting their support for several recommendations from CRUK and Macmillan.
What struck me most about the display in front of Holyrood, though, which took the form of a giant set of weighting scales filled with junk food and healthier food (including the aforementioned plastic fish), was a mannequin dressed in a school uniform. The mannequin, a backpack spilling open having been crammed with chocolate and empty sweet wrappers,
represented the one in three Scottish children who are overweight or obese. From that moment I was hooked. If half the UK were to have cancer, then it is almost guaranteed that every child, as some point in their life, will experience cancer in some way. No child should have to go through that, and so I am now hoping to play my part in ensuring that they don’t have to.
Being an Ambassador takes a couple of hours a fortnight, but those couple of hours can hopefully save a lot of lives. They can take any form you wish, from sending an e-mail, to a letter, to having a phone call, to talking one to one, to addressing a crowd. It is a volunteering role that has taken me from Westminster, to Holyrood, to Cambridge and more, and has allowed me to meet and work with some of the most determined, kind-hearted people I know; people motivated by their personal battles, and the battles and losses of the people that they love.
It is because of them, and researchers, doctors, nurses, clinicians and many more like them, that survival of cancer has doubled over the past 40 years. Their resolve means that the statement I mentioned at the beginning is changing:
One in two people living in the UK will develop cancer at some point in their life. But if we all work together, chances are, that they will survive.
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