Throughout the month of October, Harford County residents will be decorating their homes and store fronts in pink to support cancer care.

The Paint the Town Pink initiative was created by The Downtown Alliance. What they would like you to do is put out decorations and paint your storefront pink. These stores normally have big sales to help support the families of cancer patients, and although the pink ribbon is a symbol of breast cancer awareness, Paint the Town Pink is about all forms of cancer.

The Downtown Alliance do this to support the families of cancer patients and to spread awareness of the disease, but it is around mostly to help support the patient so they raise money to help pay some of their bills and give them things such as nurse navigators, oncology social workers, counseling and support groups.

“We want to obviously shine as a municipality, as Bel Air, and certainly lead the charge, because that’s something that we do so often,” Christine McPherson, executive director of the Downtown Alliance, told Bel Air town commissioners and department heads during a work session.

There are many ways that you can help support this movement and there are lots of events you can get involved in or you could make a direct donation to the Cancer Lifenet at the Kaufman cancer center to someone specific, in memory of someone or just to help out a stranger.

“I think that everyone in the room has been affected by some kind of cancer in one way or another, so I think it’s important to educate the community that it’s not just breast cancer,” McPherson said.

I hope you enjoy the activities that they have planned and if you would like to support paint the town pink go to belairmaryland.org/projects/paint-the-town-pink for more information.