For ten years, this thing my mum built stayed in two countries. Twenty-plus cities across Belgium, four editions in Dubai, close to 8,000 women who showed up to compete, sweat, and get screened along the way. That was already more than most people build in a decade. Then earlier this year, someone from Pink Ribbon International reached out. Not us reaching out trying to sell something — them, coming to us.
What It Actually Felt Like
I won't pretend I had some grand instinct about it immediately. My first reaction was closer to "why us." PinkRibbon International (PRI) is a real global network with a real charitable footprint, and here's a family-run event out of Belgium and the UAE, and they wanted to talk about bringing it to their entire chapter network. It didn't feel like a pitch we made land. It felt like someone had actually done their homework on what we'd built and decided it was worth taking seriously.
Why It Wasn't a Fast Yes
We didn't sign anything in that first conversation, obviously. There were real questions to work through, on both sides — how a decade of Belgium and UAE history would translate to markets we'd never operated in except through Hercules Trophy, how to protect the format so it doesn't get watered down into a generic charity 5k with a different logo on it, how the money and the reporting would actually work so nothing gets lost between good intentions and an actual bank transfer. My mum and dad spent months on this, not because anyone was dragging their feet, but because getting it wrong would have meant a lot of well-meaning countries running a version of this event that isn't actually this event.
The global partnership was signed. Yves Vekemans and Inge Van Belle for us, Fionnuala Shannon for PRI. That's the sentence that took a decade to earn and about six months of actual negotiation to write.
What This Actually Unlocks
PinkRibbon International brings ninety chapters into the conversation — chapters we could never have reached on our own, in countries we've never had a reason to know how to operate in. The first wave of launches is aimed at India, the United Kingdom, and Nigeria, with a second wave planned after that reaching further into France, South Africa, Canada, and Australia. Every one of those is a country where women will get the same version of this event we built in Dubai and Belgium — the battles, the six-week build-up, the community, and the on-site screening that's been the quiet, serious core of this the entire time.
Why the Screening Part Is the Actual Headline
It's easy to talk about international rollout in terms of countries and launch dates, and I've just done exactly that. But the number that actually matters to me isn't how many chapters sign up. It's how many women walk away from an event like this having had a health check they might not have gotten around to otherwise. Our last UAE edition alone delivered 300+ on-site breast health screenings, with several women referred for follow-up care. Multiply that across ninety potential chapters and you're not looking at a bigger event calendar. You're looking at a genuinely different scale of women reached at the exact moment it might matter most.
What I Keep Thinking About
My mum built this in Belgium before I was old enough to understand what it was for. I grew up watching it grow into Dubai. Now I'm watching an email turn it into something that could exist in a dozen countries I've never even visited, run by people I've never met, still carrying the same format, the same seriousness underneath the fun. That's a strange thing to sit with. It's also the exact reason I care about protecting what makes this thing work, format and screening both, as it goes somewhere much bigger than either of my parents probably imagined when they ran the first edition. A dream come true.
