Research a current community relations/charity activity in the world of sports. E.g. an athlete donating money, a team visiting a hospital or hosting a fundraising event.
• Discuss the details of this initiative. Which athletes were involved? Who benefited?
• Describe why you think the initiative helps to strengthen the brand of the organization(s) involved.
• Did the initiative seem genuine to you? Cite details to describe why or why not. Do you think the activity took place to divert attention from a negative controversy?
Cristiano Ronaldo's Charitable Contributions
Cristiano Ronaldo is a Portuguese superstar that has a history of being charitable. He has logged dozens of assistances to the community during his long soccer career in different football clubs. He may be an international’s most productive and most viable sportspersons, but the Portuguese star’s list of generous contribution is as widespread as his range of lucrative funding deals (Marcotti, 2011). The footballer most recent philanthropic project has been witness as he offers to fund the construction of cancer center in Portugal as a part of the joint venture with other Portuguese. The money donated was for the charity in the Portuguese cancer center at his motherland (Wahl, 2012). Therefore, this article examines charity activity of Cristiano Ronaldo in donating money to fund the construction and operations of cancer center in Portugal.
The initiative was done by Cristiano Ronaldo when he donated about one hundred and five thousand Euros. The funds were for use of construction of cancer center at the hospital where his mother was treated when she had cancer (Scaramuzzo, Gordils-Perez, & Cullen, 2014). Ronaldo aimed at ensuring that pilot mechanism for cancer treatment at the hospital was designed to advance in cancer examination and collaborative interactions around Portugal. The funds from Cristiano intended to assist investigators at all levels to be capable of applying for support for preliminaries studies that pursue novel approaches to the cancer issues (Leidner, Li, & Thompson, 2013). The player proposed to fund the research so as his country could be capable of developing new interdisciplinary collaborations and emphasize translation regarding cancer disease (Lee et al., 2014). Funds from the player were to help in funding different surveys and education initiatives within the cancer center with a high potential to reduce cases of cancer among patients in Portugal.
Cancer patients in Portugal benefited and general population, as the cancer research was able to be attained to help in addressing different incidents and prevalence factors that leads to the condition. Besides, scientists within the hospital also benefited as the funds from Cristiano Ronaldo helped them in handling the worry they had as cancer moon shots multiply (Wippold, Karam-Hage, Blalock, & Cinciripini, 2015). Medical officers at the hospital benefited because they were able to launch multiple major Portuguese cancer initiatives that had infused cash into immunotherapy (Milne, & Antoniou, 2016). Achieving of immunotherapy remained to be one of the most promising new methods of treating cancer in any hospital. The effort of funding cancer center by Cristiano Ronaldo focused on diagnosing and treating patients with cancer who have faced tremendous financial, physical, and emotional challenges (Grant & Garland, 2014) The funds aimed to allow the center to focus on starting cancer treatment by beginning at diagnosing that can last a lifetime, forcing different families and patients to incur the host of financial hardships. It aimed at reducing the instances that the families and patients in the cancer center are forced to take unpaid leave from their work, lack of transportation to as well as from treatment, and instances of being unable to afford the charges of drugs for nausea or pain.
Donation to Fund Construction of Cancer Center in Portugal
The funds helped to reduce instances of cancer that remained to be the second most cause of death in Portugal. The fund aimed at lowering the twenty-four point three percent of cancer deaths caused by malignant neoplasm through boosting cancer center operations (Reffey & Davies, 2013). The fund strengthened cancer center as this disease became priority because of a substantial impact on loss of productivity and rising costs of treatments that Cristiano Ronaldo aimed to reduce through funding the project in his country (Brandão, Schulz, & Matos, 2016). The fund strengthened values in health care that was challenging due to the complexity involved in offering care. Moreover, funds from Cristiano Ronaldo helped in improving operations of cancer center in a hospital in Portugal by enabling the hospital to acquire vital resources such as staff, space, types of equipment, and materials for cancer treatment and care (Wind, Rajan, & van Harten, 2016). The fund allowed the medical practitioners to obtain essential resources useful in handling cancer patients within the hospital.
Provision of funds by Ronaldo enabled improvement of Portuguese economy by supporting the massive shift in the fiscal position of government. The funds allowed the government to channel its resources meant to improve the operations of cancer center to other services that were necessary for developing the life of citizens. The initiative helped in supporting government actions as the facility was now able to hold large number of cancer patients at any given time without acquiring funds from Portuguese authority. From the time the cancer center received these funds from the athlete, the management of the center constructed more facilities to improve their services as well as having better facilities to offer care to different people who have cancer. The initiative helps in strengthening the brand of center by ensuring that the management performs diagnosis and identify the condition of disease among patients at an early stage (Pinheiro, 2017). The action also reduces the intangible costs in the treatment of cancer. These intangible charges comprise of changes in the individual’s life quality along with the influence of the disease itself or resulting from its therapy like suffering and pain of an individual (Ludt et al., 2013). Besides, funds by Ronaldo helped in strengthening operations of cancer center by providing money for innovation and promising survey that tests multi-level physical activity invention schemes (Grassi et al., 2016). The initiative helped in processes of accelerating the ideas of adoption and validation of cellular, molecular, imaging makers, and assays for detecting cancer, diagnosing, and monitoring. It also helped in improving the prediction of response, resistance to treatment, along with markers for cancer control and prevention.
Objectives of the Funding Initiative
The initiative by Cristiano Ronaldo to fund cancer center in Portugal seem genuine. He was already aware of the challenges that the center faced when his mother was being diagnosed and treated for cancer. It was out of his will that he decided to channel huge sum of money to help in improving the operations and other activities at the center (Wahl, 2012). Besides, this initiative was genuine as some of the reasons that Ronaldo stated while funding the center had been reported by different researchers. The funder had the intention of improving the lives of his countrymen by ensuring that every cancer patient within Portugal was able to access free services of cancer treatment at any given time (Leidner, Li, & Thompson, 2013). Besides, the initiative by Ronaldo was genuine as he was paying back to the cancer center for treating his mother when she had cancer.
The funding of cancer center took place to divert attention from the negative controversies that different researchers have reported on operations of cancer center in Portugal. The funder aimed at ensuring that every essential facility and types of equipment for combating the cases of cancer was easily accessible by every individual (Pinheiro, 2017). The initiative also targeted at securing that negativity that had been on media platforms that stated the cancer center lacked vital types of equipment for treatment and diagnosis. Ronaldo was assisting the cancer center to be able to come out of the financial challenges that might in one way or the other affects their operations of providing quality services during diagnosis and treatment of cancer (Grant & Garland, 2014). Therefore, funder wanted to improve the hopes of patients to focus on faith, health, and healing rather than worrying much about the amount of money to pay for treatment that they receive from cancer center in Portugal.
References
Brandão, T., Schulz, M., & Matos, P. (2016). Psychological adjustment after breast cancer: a systematic review of longitudinal studies. Psycho-Oncology, 26(7), 917-926. doi: 10.1002/pon.4230
Grant, W., & Garland, C. (2014). Vitamin D has a greater impact on cancer mortality rates than on cancer incidence rates. BMJ, 348(apr29 13), g2862-g2862. doi: 10.1136/bmj.g2862
Grassi, L., Fujisawa, D., Odyio, P., Asuzu, C., Ashley, L., & Bultz, B. (2016). Disparities in psychosocial cancer care: a report from the International Federation of Psycho-oncology Societies. Psycho-Oncology, 25(10), 1127-1136. doi: 10.1002/pon.4228
Lee, G., Ow, M., Akhileswaran, R., Pang, G., Fan, G., & Goh, B. (2014). Quality of life domains important and relevant to family caregivers of advanced cancer patients in an Asian population: a qualitative study. Quality Of Life Research, 24(4), 817-828. doi: 10.1007/s11136-014-0832-3
Leidner, R., Li, L., & Thompson, C. (2013). Dampening Enthusiasm for Circulating MicroRNA in Breast Cancer. Plos ONE, 8(3), e57841. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057841
Ludt, S., Urban, E., Eckardt, J., Wache, S., Broge, B., & Kaufmann-Kolle, P. (2013). Evaluating the Quality of Colorectal Cancer Care across the Interface of Healthcare Sectors. Plos ONE, 8(5), e60947. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0060947
Marcotti, G. (2011). “Cristiano Ronaldo.” Sports Illustrated, pp. 10–13. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=61283179&site=ehost-live.
Milne, R., & Antoniou, A. (2016). Modifiers of breast and ovarian cancer risks for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers. Endocrine-Related Cancer, 23(10), T69-T84. doi: 10.1530/erc-16-0277
Pinheiro, F. (2017). Cristiano Ronaldo e Eusébio – Dois olhares contemporâneos. Aletria: Revista De Estudos De Literatura, 26(3), 319. doi: 10.17851/2317-2096.26.3.319-324
Reffey, S., & Davies, L. (2013). Funding: Database to counter duplication. Nature, 495(7440), 174-174. doi: 10.1038/495174c
Scaramuzzo, L., Gordils-Perez, J., & Cullen, P. (2014). Getting Patients Active: Using National Data to Drive Practice. Clinical Journal Of Oncology Nursing, 18(s5), 41-43. doi: 10.1188/14.cjon.s2.41-43
Wahl, Grant. (2012). “The Case for Cristiano.” Sports Illustrated, 117(1), p. 32. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=77391682&site=ehost-live.
Wind, A., Rajan, A., & van Harten, W. (2016). Quality assessments for cancer centers in the European Union. BMC Health Services Research, 16(1). doi: 10.1186/s12913-016-1738-2
Wippold, R., Karam-Hage, M., Blalock, J., & Cinciripini, P. (2015). Selection of Optimal Tobacco Cessation Medication Treatment in Patients With Cancer. Clinical Journal Of Oncology Nursing, 19(2), 170-175. doi: 10.1188/15.cjon.170-175
