Plymouth Breast Cancer Charity Calls It Quits After Helping Hundreds
A Plymouth charity is calling it quits after helping hundreds of breast cancer survivors and their families over the past 10 years. Jaime Kastner, Becci Powers-Johnson and Kathy Robb Heins founded Pink Courage Incorporated in November 2010.
Pink Courage Incorporated sold the rest of its items at a sale Friday.
“We wanted to help local breast cancer patients through their journeys,” said Kastner.
All of the founders have a connection to breast cancer. Robb Heins is a two-time breast cancer survivor. Kastner’s mom survived breast cancer as well.
Smiling, Kastner said, “She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 18 years old, and she’s a 36-year survivor.”
Powers-Johnson, meanwhile, lost her mom to ovarian cancer.
“While we were going through her journey, we realized our family had a big history of breast and ovarian cancers. We found out she did carry the BRCA1 genetic mutation,” she said.
Pink Courage has encouraged and uplifted breast cancer patients not to give up in their fight.
“I love doing what we can to support others. We’ve done several care packages for people we found out are newly diagnosed,” said Powers-Johnson.
The charity assisted those who fought breast cancer by selling merchandise at events.
“We would donate money to survivors and help out any way we could with their journeys,” said Kastner.
But the charity says it will shut down Oct. 11.
“It became a little bit more of a liability for us to have the nonprofit, that’s why we changed our minds to make the difficult decision to let it go,” said Kastner.
As a result, Pink Courage is selling merchandise at 90 to 95 percent off. While the nonprofit is ending, the founders say their mission will continue to live on through the patients they’ve helped.
