Sharing our stories to spark change

How can sharing our personal experiences of cancer lead to an improvement in care, so it’s more empathetic and human-centered?

That’s the question posed by The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) who are the organisers of World Cancer Day on 4th February 2025. And when the UICC asked me a few months ago if I could run a storytelling workshop, it was an easy ‘yes’! It was the perfect fit where I could combine my storytelling expertise with my own lived experience.

Because I know first-hand that behind every cancer diagnosis lies a human story - of grief, pain, healing, resilience, love and so much more. Every experience is unique. By speaking up about our experiences we form a collective voice: one that’s powerful enough to bring about systemic change. So this year’s World Cancer Day is about just that: sharing our experiences to raise awareness. Whether you’re living with cancer, you’re a friend or relative, a care-giver or a healthcare professional - when we tell our stories we can make change happen.

I loved running the session - thank you to everybody who joined today’s webinar. We had people from 29 countries: from Afghanistan and China to Nigeria and Vietnam!

Stories created today will be shared online on the World Cancer Day website and I look forward to reading and watching them.

And in the meantime you can watch my own World Cancer Day story here!