Year 9 students Sam, Ben and Darcy, humanities teacher Imogen Cakebread and assistant principal Paul Webster caught up with our cancer services director Andrea Janes this afternoon to learn about the work of the day oncology centre and share how, last year when they and their classmates were in Year 8, took on some serious fundraising for charity. It included an ice cream sandwiches sale that was a sell out! More recently, they brainstormed charities they believe make a big difference to the lives of locals before choosing to split their 2024 proceeds between us and Western District Foodshare. We consider ourselves to be very lucky to have been selected.
Our appeal total now sits at $86,052 – just $6,059 short of its target. Other generous donations received this week include $360 from the East Framlingham Golf Club’s ladies charity golf day and an $8,374 donation from our SWH Woolsthorpe Auxiliary. The auxiliary gift will pay outright for one of the 11 chairs needed. Our Warrnambool Auxiliary has also committed to funding an entire chair.
‘The reason we’re raising $92,111 to buy 11 new chairs is that our current 11-chair fleet has been used 19,000 times since we relocated our day oncology unit from the Warrnambool Base Hospital to the South West Regional Cancer Centre in 2017. Each of these 19,000 times, a cancer patient has sat in one of them for at least three hours. That’s a huge amount of usage and they’ve done us proud but it’s time to replace them before they become uncomfortable. That’s the last thing we want for our cancer patients’, SWH appeal manager Suzan Morey explains. She hopes the appeal target will be reached before the end of the financial year. Donations of $2 and above are tax deductible.
PHOTO (from left): Imogen, Andrea, Ben, Sam (seated), Paul and Darcy.