SCHUYLKILL HAVEN - Wearing matching shirts and holding hands, about 40 children walked with their teachers from the Doodle Bug Preschool and Daycare Center to a nearby pond as part of a fundraiser for the Ta-Ta Sisterhood on Friday morning.
The Ta-Ta Sisterhood is a nonprofit organization raising funds to increase the awareness, prevention, early diagnosis, treatment and eradication of breast cancer worldwide.
Prior to setting out for the walk, all the teachers and students put their pink footprints on a white banner that said "Doodle Bug's Walk for a Cure." The banner was hung outside the school Friday afternoon.
"The kids were all excited for the walk and they really enjoyed making the banner," Amanda Rymarkiewicz-Bobella, a preschool teacher at Doodle Bug, said Friday.
With the help of several local corporate sponsors, Doodle Bug bought 90 T-shirts as a fundraiser to wear during Friday's walk.
Students were sponsored by their parents for Friday's walk to help raise funds for Bobella and a parent of one of the students, Lisa Slifko, Lake Wynonah, to participate in the Susan G. Komen three-day walk in Philadelphia starting Oct. 5.
As members of an eight-woman Ta-Ta Sisterhood team for the event, Bobella and Slifko will walk 60 miles, 20 miles each day.
Each participant is required to raise at least $2,300. Bobella said the team raised $12,451 as of Friday afternoon.
"I've always been a big supporter for the cause and do anything I can do to help," Bobella said. "This cause is very important to us."
Slifko said she first got involved with the Ta-Ta Sisterhood after her friend has been participating in the three-day walk for a couple of years. Slifko said she lost her mother to ovarian cancer.
"Although the walk is for breast cancer, cancer affects so many people and in my mind, cancer is cancer," Slifko said. "This was something that I wanted to get involved in and help raise money. I would rather walk 60 miles than have a family member or someone I know affected by cancer."