Ten highlights for ten years: Campaigns
2025-05-09
Campaigns form a significant portion of our time and effort at The Kids’ Cancer Project, galvanising the community to help us raise funds for vital kids’ cancer research.
Our campaigns take on many forms, encouraging businesses, schools and individuals to dig deep. Some include fitness challenges, others the opportunity to dress up, while one is quite the test of teamwork.
Write a Book in a Day is what we regard as Australia’s most inspiring writing challenge. We were appointed as the national charity to take over the competition in 2015, a little after I started, and haven’t looked back.
We’ve managed to grow the competition from 4,500 student and adult writers a decade ago, to over 14,000 (and still counting)! The competition has continued to challenge writers across the country who each year produce a creative collection of books which are shared in an online library, accessed by children in hospitals, helping to transport them from their hospital rooms into another world for even just a moment.
We introduced individual writer sponsorship pages in 2019, which has seen a 92% increase in funds year on year, culminating in us raising a total of $930,000, an amount that could potentially provide 115 children with access to new treatments through clinical trials.
Our sights are firmly set on breaking the $1 million barrier in 2025. Write a Book in a Day is made possible through the work of each school’s incredible team coordinators, the ingenuity of our writers, and the generosity of our sponsors. I simply cannot thank each and every one of you enough for your support of The Kids’ Cancer Project.
A special mention also to the Volunteer Readers and Judges who give up their time, to read, shortlist and ultimately choose the State and National winners every year!
The pandemic gave rise to many things during a turbulent period, but one that came to be and remained is the Better Challenge.
The Better Challenge sees participants run 90kms for the 90 kids diagnosed with cancer each month during September. Coinciding with Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, the Better Challenge has become a cornerstone of our campaigns calendar, raising over $2 million for childhood cancer research in the process.
Over the years, we've seen over 7,200 participants conquer over 1.47 million kilometres – that's enough to walk around the earth 36 times! Corporate teams often sign up and walk together, with some 1288 taking part in the Better Challenge since its inception. To put that into perspective, that’s over six times the number of teams at the Olympics.
Our corporate partners, WOTSO, have been engaged with Better Challenge since its inception, with their participation a crucial part of the entire campaign. They were also on Sunrise a couple years ago on 1 September when the Better Challenge kicked off!
Last year, the $220,000 we raised via the Better Challenge helped fund the equivalent of 20 new clinical trials beginning at Australian hospitals, 180 days of research to find a cure for paediatric cancer, and 20 expert patient reviews.
In recent years we have adopted ambassadors to help us promote the Better Challenge and its benefits. Hugo Kulcsar is someone who I’ve had a long affinity with, coaching him at Randwick Juniors.
Diagnosed with leukaemia at 11 years old, Hugo fought back against immense adversity to get back onto the park. He was part of the team that won the NSW Junior Rugby Union State Championships in Concord that I coached. He later leapt at the opportunity to become a Better Challenge ambassador, knowing the essential nature of exercise during cancer treatment and recovery.
Our 2025 ambassador, Ash Thomas, shares parallels with Hugo. An osteosarcoma survivor, Ash is an avid crossfitter that’s had to learn to walk again after she had her knee and femur replaced. Survival starts with science, but it ends with kids with cancer thriving post treatment. Both Hugo and Ash are evidence of that, underpinning the need to raise funds for kids’ cancer treatment that go beyond prevention.
These campaigns are nothing without our incredible participants and sponsors. To you, thank you. You will all continue to play a role in helping us achieve our dream of no child dying from cancer.
My tenth and final highlight is due next week!
Help me in my quest to raise $100,000. That's $10 for each the 10,000 kids that have been diagnosed with cancer over my 10-year tenure.