Cheerleaders strike a pose at a football game in September. (Photo courtesy of the Superior Health Foundation)

MARQUETTE — During October as part of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, the Superior Health Foundation runs its U.P.-wide Painting the Peninsula Pink campaign.

SHF seeks day sponsors to fill up the entire month of October and works with these businesses on special promotions to raise funds for the SHF Breast Health Fund.

This fund helps both men and women across the Upper Peninsula with out-of-pocket breast health expenses not otherwise covered by insurance.

In its tenure, SHF have provided funding to dozens and dozens of people all across the Upper Peninsula.

One hundred percent of all money raised stays in the Upper Peninsula.

“The Superior Health Foundation Breast Health Fund has helped many people across the Upper Peninsula with breast health expenses,” said Jim LaJoie, executive director of the Superior Health Foundation. “To be in a position to help people with unpaid bills is a tremendously gratifying feeling.

“Our month-long Painting the Peninsula Pink draws incredible awareness to Breast Cancer Awareness Month and raises much-needed funding to help replenish the fund. We are incredibly grateful and thankful for all of the financial support from individuals and businesses across the U.P. It’s heartwarming, to say the least.”

Each year, SHF partners with a different school in the U.P. on the event.

“Thus far, we have hosted games in seven of the 15 counties,” LaJoie said. “We do either a football game or volleyball match and get the community really involved by selling pink merchandise.

“This year, we partnered with the Gogebic Miners, which is a cooperative between Wakefield and Bessemer in Gogebic County. We hosted a pink party on Saturday, Sept. 25, for the home football game and sold pink merchandise and had silent auction and bucket drawings.

The football team wore pink uniforms that folks bid on with an online silent auction.”

This year, Painting the Peninsula Pink is proudly presented by the M.E. Davenport Foundation.

For more information, visit superiorhealthfoundation.org