What a year 2023 has been. The world saw the epic cinematic showdown of Barbenheimer (we’re obvs team Barbie and Oppenheimer is just ‘Ken’ in our world), and there was the rise of the tube girl or boob tube girl if you’re following CoppaFeel! On TikTok, our OTP Maya Jama and Stormzy rekindled their love and Harry Styles got a buzzcut (RIP those curls 🥲).
Whilst all that was going on in the world, Boob HQ was slowly taking the UK by storm, spreading our chest-checking message far and wide. So before we jump into the unknowns of 2024, let’s take some time to reflect on what we got up to in CoppaFeel!’s 2023 wrapped.
January
After Team Boobs had a well-deserved festive rest, we got busy cracking on with recruitment for our cohort of 2023 CoppaFeel! Boobettes to help spread our message across the nation. Not only that, but we also opened applications for our legendary CoppaTrek! With Gi 2023. Our beloved patron Giovanna Fletcher joined us once again, for not one, not two but THREE TREKS this year and we revealed that returning captain Pete Wicks and CoppaFeel! Breastie Ella Vaday would be joining us too!
Our fundraising team dusted off their public speaking skills and headed to Oxford University to join the phenomenal Pink Week, delivering a speech and panel event to students on campus. This student-organised movement raised a remarkable £26,000 in total for their chosen charities and normalised chest-checking conversations across the student body.
We rounded off the month with a bang, thanks to Square One who went a-boob and beyond to educate their team about the importance of checking their chests and fundraising over £9,000 as part of their year-long partnership.
Not to mention we also received a follow from John Cena on Twitter (back when it was Twitter before X took over) – no biggie!
February
February marked our Founder Kris’ 14th Cancerversary and Team Boobs took the day to do something to make them feel alive, notable mentions included new piercings, tattoos and cold water dips to name a few.
February also marked Student Volunteering Week and gave us an extra excuse to celebrate the faBOOBulous work our Uni Boob Teams do at universities up and down the UK; bringing our chest checking message to young people on their campus where we know the peer to peer impact is huge. We have 36 Uni Boob Teams across the country who take chest checking message to the young people at their campuses. They’ve spread awareness through events through their Boob Schools with other societies and departmental societies to educate students on the importance of checking, busting cancer myths through pub quizzes, and starting conversations during creative and artistic events.
In Term 1, the Uni Boob Teams have carried out over 150 awareness events with an estimated reach of over 9700 students, over 350 sign ups to our text reminder service and handed out over 3500 shower hangers on campus!
In the fundraising world of CoppaFeel!, the University of Durham hosted Aggression Sessions, the largest student-run charity boxing event in the UK and raised an incredible £12k for CoppaFeel!! Also, following world-renowned instructor Leanne Hainsby’s breast cancer diagnosis, a number of Peloton groups took on fundraising challenges to show their support, raising over £5k in just February alone. We are continually in awe of our incredible community fundraisers!
Our Education Team headed to Ipswich to deliver a Breast Awareness workshop for Ace Anglia, a people-led independent advocacy service, as part of their Women’s Health Workshops project. Thank you to Ace Anglia for helping to support us in delivering accessible breast cancer information.
March
We marched straight into the month with launching our brand new, shiny website, created in collaboration with the team at Huxley Digital. We integrated new accessibility tools like the ReciteMe toolbar so that more individuals have access to our life-saving resources thanks to enhanced screen reader technology. We also worked with the experts at Huxley to ensure our website is suitable for a range of audiences. Alongside the makeover, we introduced a new and improved navigation bar and quick exit button for an fa-boob-ulous user experience! Plus, we re-opened our CoppaShop with fresh, new merch available.
Our long-standing brand breasties Scribbler sold a range of fa-boob-ulous Mother’s Day cards in stores and online, with 12.5% of the sale price being donated directly to CoppaFeel! to support our chest-checking mission.
March welcomed another pivotal day in the CoppaFeel! Calendar, International Women’s Day, which this year we celebrated with our friends over at Black Ballad. We put the teams to the test with some boob myth-busting and gave them the lowdown on all things breast health. Catch up in our content series with Black Ballad here.
If that wasn’t enough, Katie Saunders, past-trekker, long time supporter and overall superstar, raised £2,500 for CoppaFeel! with her epic Boobtastic Charity Night – Thank you Katie!
Did someone say awards season? We saw plenty of prizes rolling in for our Uni Boob Team throughout the year, starting with Robert Gordon UBT who were awarded the Student Engagement Award by their Students’ Union (hold for applause).
April
Did you fall for our CoppaFeel! April Fools trick this year?! 🍒 🍉 🍓Sadly, Harry Styles wasn’t one of our trek captains for the year, but Harry if you’re listening we’d have you anytime – we ADORE YOU!
Remember recruitment for The Boobettes launched in January? We welcomed 39 new Boobette volunteers to ‘Boob School’ to prepare them for the year ahead. Spoiler alert…they got cracking & you can find out exactly what they got up to if you keep on reading.
We launched the limited edition Boobcase in partnership with Wild, which saw a £10,000 donation to CoppaFeel! and encouraged everyone to remember to ‘swipe your pits and check your tits’!.
This year during Asda Tickeld Pink’s Ramadan celebrations we shared the incredible Nikhar’s story. Nikhar’s own words sum up Ramadan perfectly – “it’s a time of reflection, gratitude and compassion; it’s a time that we come together as a community and support one another”. Nikhar was just 24 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer during the month of Ramadan in 2020. She’s using her experience to educate, encourage & empower young people to understand the signs & symptoms of breast cancer and check their chests regularly.
30 legends took on the London Landmarks Marathon for Team Boobs including our very own patron Dermot O’Leary. The CoppaFeel! community were behind them all the way at our dedicated Cheer Point. Together they covered 400 miles and raised an incredible £15,527 for CoppaFeel! 😍
We were awarded Voluntary Organisation of the Year by Edge Hill University for ‘providing exceptional opportunities for…students to display their commitment and make meaningful contributions to their local community through volunteering.’ We were pretty chuffed with that.
Our lovely Partnerships team attended the Business Charity awards and were delighted when Asda Tickled Pink won the ‘Marketing Partnership of the Year’ Award!
We had plenty of fundraising activity going on thanks to our amazing community! Janners Jogging for Jugs (a group of long-term supporters) ran the Plymouth Half and raised £1,200, Kettering based tattoo studio – The Scribble Shed – held a Charity Flash Day and raised £1,400, and our Alumni CoppaTrek! raised £98,699 in total! We were also joined by our amazing founders Kris and Maren for our alumni trek alongside other CoppaTrek! legends Giovanna Fletcher and Candice Brown.
Following the Alumni Trek, we launched our new volunteering pilot programme of CoppaFeel! Ambassadors equipping our community of trekkers to keep spreading the good boob word and raising awareness in their local areas. Since then our Ambassadors have been making the most of their networks, spreading our lifesaving message everywhere from breastfeeding groups to fitness studios and even bathrooms up and down the UK!
To round off awards season, our Uni Boob Teams scooped up the trophies at their universities, including Wrexham UBT winning Society Event of the Year and Cardiff UBT winner Society of the Year alongside two other awards!
At Boob HQ, as part of our EDI strategy, we introduced The Other Box: Diversity Dictionary training for Team Boobs. This training focuses on mindsets, microaggressions, vocabulary and 5 key tools on how to communicate inclusively when faced with differences.
June marked the yearly halfway point, but that didn’t mean here at CoppaFeel! we were slowing down!
CoppaTrek! with Gi took place in the beautiful Hadrian’s Wall County and raised an incredible £391,701! Special thanks to the amazing celebrity CoppaTrek! Captains; Gi Fletcher, Candice Brown, Ella Vaday, Matt Willis, Emma Willis, Sanam Harrinanan and Frankie Bridge.
We celebrated Volunteers’ Week – a national campaign to recognise the contribution volunteers make in their communities across the UK – showcasing some of the stories and experiences from within our CoppaFeel! Volunteer community.
Things started to heat up as we announced our partnership with UK’s Love Island. We coupled up with the iconic Love Island villa, giving their bathrooms a makeover with CoppaFeel! Check Your Chest stickers, reminding the islanders (and viewers at home!) to copp-a-feel. Did you eagle-eyed viewers catch us on your screens?!
July
Sound the boob klaxon… In July we launched our Chest-Checklist campaign in collaboration with Black Women Rising UK! Driven by the need to redress lack of Black skin representation in breast cancer communications, The Chest Checklist aims to drive awareness and educate Black women on the signs and symptoms of breast cancer, empowering them to seek medical advice if they notice any unusual changes. We’re aiming to tackle the problematic underrepresentation of Black skin in breast cancer awareness communities, and we were so excited to share it with you! Watch the CoppaFeel! Chest Checklist here.
Over on social, we launched our first IllustraTIT in our content creator series, where each month we shine a spotlight on the amazing illustrators involved. For July, we shared the lovely Sakina’s illustrations as a cheerful reminder to get feelin’ yourself. Keep your eyes peeled on our Instagram page for more to come! 🍒🍓🍉🍋 Plus we also held a chest-chat with CoppaFeel! pals Erin Kennedy and Amy Dowden as they discussed their breast cancer experiences, the importance of chest checking and Amy’s update on her treatment journey so far.
Every year as our Uni Boob Team’s wind down we like to thank them for all the fa-boob-ulous work they have done throughout the academic year 🎉. This year we invited UBT Leaders to our London office for our annual Graduation event. We were joined by Tea and Crafting who led a candle-making workshop and provided us with a great selection of scents to choose from! 🕯️
This summer we hosted ‘Boob Camp’, our annual community day for The Boobettes, for the first time since the pandemic. With special thanks to CoppaFeel! friend, and brilliant guest speaker, Erin Kennedy 🌟and to our wonderful partners Avon, Asda and Scribbler for their support in paying a big THANK YOU to our fabulous Boobette volunteers.
We also attended the Student Health Association Conference and launched our Student Medical Practice digital toolkit – bespoke resources designed for educating students on campus about breast cancer awareness.
August
We also worked with muti-award winning, Gen Z marketing agency SEED again this year, challenging them to encourage students to check their chests regularly whilst driving awareness. We worked with 17 SEED content creators to help us reach their online communities of students with our chest-checking message.
And finally, legends Jorjia Smith, Perrie Edwards, Elz The Witch and Only Bells reshared our chest checklist to their stories – reaching over 1 million people, as estimated!
CoppaFeel!’s messaging was shared to the amazing community of rugby league fans in Yorkshire by our longtime supporters the Batley Bulldogs. Their 10th annual Pink Weekend raised a phenomenal £7,000 for our work and we couldn’t be more grateful for the team getting behind our cause.
September
September, known as the month before the Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM for short!) buzz and final prep we were busy, busy bees at Boob HQ and beyond!
We kicked the month of with a trip to Cornwall where an intrepid team of cyclists conquered the Hilly Hundred. The brain child of our co-founder Maren, this strenuous route saw the team cover a hundred miles of Cornish hills (if you know, you know) whilst taking in the beauty of the coast, the moors and even time for a sneaky lap of the Eden Project in fancy dress. Punctures were had, pasties were devoured and by the end of the weekend £20,000 was raised to help stamp out the late detection of breast cancer. Naturally the first place finisher was our beloved Ray, who despite being in his 60s continues to show us all how it’s done by somehow finding time to fit in a 5k run every single day!
Our final CoppaTrek! With Gi of the year took place in the amazing French Alps, our Tour Du Mont Blanc Trek raised £564,454. With special shout-outs to celeb captains; Gi Fletcher, Candice Brown, Anna Whitehouse, Kelsey Parker and Pete Wicks – you’re all legends! That means collectively CoppaTrek! Raised over £1 million for CoppaFeel! in 2023 alone! Thank you to everyone who trekked and supported CoppaTrek! too, we couldn’t do it without you.
Our digital-first, chest-checking tool, The Self-Checkout, had a makeover! We gave the self-checkout a well-needed lick of paint and refreshed it to bring you the ultimate chest-checking tool to help guide you through getting to know your normal.
As we embraced freshers season, we welcomed 27 Uni Boob Teams in September and dropped over 100,000 shower hangers in fresher boxes across university campuses. Big thanks to our pals at Dig In for working with us to share our shower hanger resources in university campuses nationwide.
And to top it all off, we passed our PIF accreditation! This mark of quality assurance highlights the credibility of our materials as a trusted resource for Healthcare Professionals across the UK.
October
For newcomers to CoppaFeel!, October holds significant importance in the breast cancer realm. It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month (BCAM), a time when the entire nation engages in conversations about breast health and the crucial understanding of one’s own body. It’s kind of a major event. In fact, so many impactful things unfolded during BCAM that summarizing it might just take an entire month. So, to make it more digestible, we’ve condensed the highlights into bullet points…
We celebrated our amazing BCAM partners – Asda Tickled Pink, Avon, Boux Avenue, Bravissimo, Curve, Dickies, Emma Bridgewater, Eylure, HECK!, Myvitamins and Peloton
It was the BIGGEST year for Asda Tickled Pink Products, raising over £1.1 million for us and our pals at Breast Cancer Now!
Asda Tickled Pink Fundraising weekend took place with over 400+ volunteers donning their best pink attire and collecting cash donations for us at stores nationwide
We celebrated Avon hitting a mighty £1 million for CoppaFeel! since we first partnered, honored through a 1 million boob drone shot
200 community fundraisers supported us during BCAM alone with their events. Highlights include; Peachy Den & Fruity Booty’s sample sale, which raised £2.3k. Ella Judge held a successful charity art auction for the second year in a row, raising over £1k. Emma Kirk raised £3k with her Manchester Half. The Breast Fest team raised £2.4k with their boob-themed festival. Liverpool Uni Athletics Union held pink training sessions and raised £1.5k. The team at Boom Battle Bar Exeter cycled 200 miles and raised £3k. Bella Rosa Lingerie held their annual raffle, raising £4.5k.
Not mentioned by name are the hundreds of wonderful people who held bake sales, raffles, sponsored walks, non-uniform days, office fundraisers and more, all in the name of spreading lifesaving breast awareness.
The Boobettes delivered a *record-breaking* 124 awareness events in BCAM with an estimated reach of over 15,000 people
Our Uni Boob Teams ran an incredible 120 awareness events in BCAM at universities up and down the UK.
We sent our text reminders to over 125,000 people this month
Over 90k users via our web app The Self-Checkout.
Our very own CoppaFeel! photobooth popped up in Shoreditch Boxpark
Back by popular demand the Wild x CoppaFeel! Boob case hit Boots in stores and online in November, donating £5 per case to CoppaFeel! – there’s still time to get hands on a limited edition case!
The iconic Asda Tickled Pink Ball made a return to celebrate, fundraise and raise awareness for both CoppaFeel! and Breast Cancer Now. The night raised a whopping £1.2 million through ticket sales, a raffle, a silent auction, and a live auction hosted by Jamie Laing. Further fundraising news, Eve Mullan’s 300ft bungee jump raised over £1k – absolutely incredible!
Meanwhile, we were busy talking to you lovely lot out and about with our very own CoppaFeel! Photobooth. We popped up in Shoreditch Boxpark and in the Gymshark Regent Street store – Thank you to everyone who visited, took photos, watched our chest checklist and stopped to chat with us about chest checking.
We crowned this year’s Queen B’s from within The Boobettes community – congratulations to Kudzai and Georgie for a huge year and going above and beyond to educate young people about the importance of chest checking.
December
Sound the boob klaxon once AGAIN, we had a CoppaFeel! First in December! This festive season we were so proud to be chosen as one of the 12 charities to take part in the world’s biggest charity gaming event, Jingle Jam! The epic streaming and gaming creators joined us; FreyzPlayz, Smajor, Soupforeloise, Team GEEIQ and ladygamervixen, who helped to raise incredible funds for CoppaFeel! and spread our chest-checking message to their online communities. Jingle Jam this year has raised over £2.5 million, meaning that over £200,000 will be donated to CoppaFeel!. A massive thank you to anyone who streamed on behalf of CoppaFeel! – we love you!
To get us in the festive spirit the elves at Boob HQ have decorated our office, fuelled us with festive treats and organised candle painting and a festive play for Team Boobs. Meanwhile, our punny pals at Scribbler donated 6.25% of sales from the Christmas card charity packs to CoppaFeel! and the wonderful Creating Memories. We truly have all the festive feels!
WOW 2023 has been an epic year. None of our work at CoppaFeel! can be done alone. It is thanks to EVERYONE in our community, from volunteers to trustees, patrons to partners, fundraisers to IT technicians and everyone in between that our chest-checking message continues, which is why we send you a massive THANK YOU from everyone at Team Boobs. And if you do one thing during the holidays, why not make it a check of your chest? We can’t think of a better way to kick off the New Year than getting to know your normal!
