October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and the newest voice shedding light on the cause is a familiar one. "The Vampire Diaries" star Nina Dobrev has partnered with Puma's Project Pink to help raise funds for the breast cancer charity of your choosing. That's right. Through October 7, you can vote for which organization will receive funds raised through Project Pink. It's one component of the charity puzzle that drew Nina in.

"What's cool about [Project Pink] is that it empowers people. It empowers women. It empowers girls to actually do something, and it puts the money in their hands, and they decide where it goes," Nina told us while in New York City to support the campaign. "They choose the organization that gets all the money, and they have a voice. And that's pretty powerful."

Voting isn't the only way you can get involved with Project Pink. You can lend a hand just by shopping! Head on over to the Puma website to snag a piece of cute Project Pink apparel, like the T-shirt Nina sported during our interview, and all the profits will go to charity. Additionally, each time you tweet #projectpink, Puma will donate $1 per day, per user (up to $25,000) to the winning charity.

Even though Nina's family has been lucky enough not to be touched by the dreaded disease, it's still a cause close to Nina's heart. "It's important to me because, every single person, there's not a single person who isn't affected by it or knows someone who is affected by breast cancer," she said. "And although in my immediate family we've been really lucky... I do have friends whose parent or sister or aunt are either fighting or have fought with breast cancer... It's scary, and it's not easy and we're all affected by it. If we all ban together and support each other, and we all fight to find a cure, someday there will be one."

Head on over to Puma.com for more info about Project Pink!

Will you help Nina with Project Pink? Sound off in the comments and on Twitter!