It’s a tough time of year if you have cancer: Redkite
For most people, this time of year is about fun with family, a great feast, and a game of backyard cricket. It’s an opportunity to enjoy life and surround yourself with the people you love. But for others in the community, the festive period poses significant challenges. At Redkite we know this is particularly so for families who are facing the impacts of their child’s cancer.
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I’ve spoken to so many mums and dads who say it can be really hard to embrace the festivities of Christmas when going through cancer. And while parents can try to make everything seem normal, Christmas can never be the same when your child is sick. This is further exacerbated by the financial burden that often goes hand-in-hand with a cancer diagnosis. And as we know, cancer doesn’t stop at Christmas.
In fact, 100 kids will be diagnosed with cancer this festive season. And the sad reality is that children die from this cruel disease every week of the year.
Fortunately for these families, they are not alone.
Redkite helps children and young people with cancer and their families and is there to support them through all these challenges.
We are there to assist families with critical services including counselling in hospitals, music therapy and help paying essential household bills. And we also bring some Christmas joy by distributing over a thousand festive food hampers to these families.
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But, we couldn’t do it without the incredibly generous support of individual donors and corporate partners like Coles. The incredible fundraising efforts of Coles staff and Bendigo’s big-hearted community, who support us through buying Christmas donation cards, Gerry the Gingerbread and a range of other products from their local Coles stores, has helped enable us do what we do.
Since 2013, Coles has raised more than $32 million for Redkite with local Coles Supermarket and Coles Express teams and customers in Bendigo being a great contributor. It has transformed cancer care in Australia and helped 14 families in the local area during the past year. This support has included helping nine individuals with essential costs like household bills and fuel, providing counselling to eight people, helping four children or young people to cover education or career costs and assisting one young person with tailored education and career guidance.
While we have been able to help many families, it’s vital we reach even more with our essential services — not just at Christmas time, but all year round.
On behalf of all the families Redkite helps, I’d like to offer an enormous thank you to Coles, its passionate charity champions and staff, and of course generous Bendigo customers for the support they have given so far and everything they do in the future.
Monique Keighery, CEO Redkite
A good tyre deed done
My partner and I would like to thank the young man who changed the flat tyre on our car last Thursday.
We only know that his name is Gabriel.
We were on our way from Beaufort to a Bendigo nursing home where my partner's mum was dying.
It was dark and raining and we are too old to do this type of work. He will always be in our thoughts.
Bryan de Pree, Beaufort
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