The Purple Boot Brigade is a fundraising campaign dedicated to supporting education and awareness programs for breast cancer, across Australia.

The moment I heard about people wearing PURPLE BOOTS to help beat breast cancer, I was hooked! What a great idea! Of course, I wanted to know more about the campaign, and to hear the story of how it all began.

So last week, I had the honour of meeting up with Ros Worthington. We arranged to meet at the fashion outlet of a good friend of Ros’ – celebrated and uber-successful WA fashion label, Morrison.

Ros is an amazing woman. I read her bio, and I already knew she had established the Make A Wish Foundation of Western Australia and The Breast Cancer Foundation of Western Australia.

As I talked to her, I discovered she had worked at such a grass roots level – travelling around the state, visiting remote and rural communities, helping health workers and local women, educating and spreading the word about early breast cancer detection.

Ros also told me her life story, and I was amazed at the sheer number of enormous difficulties that she has overcome. And that she has responded to it all by giving so much back to her community, locally and nationally.

Steel Blue is a company who manufacture work and casual wear boots, and to promote awarness of breast cancer, they collaborated with the Breast Cancer Foundation of Western Australia to make a bright purple range of boots. Like I said, a brilliant idea!

Imagine a workman walking onto a building site wearing bright purple steel-capped safety boots. Of course, everyone who sees the boots will suddenly know about the campaign, and will tell their family and friends about it.

$30 from the sale of every pair of boots goes directly towards the development of an on-going national campaign aimed at making younger women aware of the need to detect brest cancer as early as possible – because earlier detections have much better survival rates.

I personally don’t have much need for steel-capped safety boots, but I love them as a fashion statement! I was told stories of women travelling around the world with them, turning up at fashion events in them, and even getting married in them! Just to make that statement – BE BREAST AWARE! So I thought I’d have a bit of fun with them too.

My son Sean was happily clumping around the house in my pair. Even at 3.5 years old, he was asking, “Why are these boots PURPLE?”

Part of the national education campaign is the “Test Your Breast IQ” quiz. You simply visit the website, click through a multiple choice quiz, and it tells you the correct answer each time you get it wrong.

I did not know, for example, that men can get breast cancer. The idea of the campaign is to break down mis-information and fear about breast cancer that reduce the chances of beating it. But of course, breast cancer is not such a happy topic, and to encourage people to have some fun taking this educational quiz, there are some pretty cool prizes up for grabs.

Each week, somone who takes the quiz can win a pair of the fabulous purple boots, but at the end of March, someone will win the major prize: an $8000 in value luxury holiday to Thailand for two people, with $1000 spending money thrown in!

You do have to be an Australian resident to be eligible for the main prize, but hey – anyone can take the quiz, learn more, and spread the word! Or you can just go and buy a pair of these Purple Boots that start conversations, by visiting the distributors list on the Purple Boot Brigade website.

I’m also very glad to say that Nuffnang Australia are supporting the Purple Boots campaign! You will notice an animating ad for the Purple Boots campaign located at the top of the right hand side column of this webpage. Nuffnang is running the ad for the month of March, at no cost, as the first of their contributions to spreading the word about important causes, across every participating blog in their network.

I know that Nuffnang have more exposure for good causes planned. So if you have a blog, and you would like to help charities like The Purple Boots Brigade do their important work, you can easily run these type of ads by joining up to the Nuffnang network.

But if this is not your cup of tea – wearing purple boots, breast cancer education, winning a trip to Thailand, or Nuffnang’s charity appeal – please take a minute to spread the word to someone who might be interested!