Thank you Cairns

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.

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.

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. 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 team and Cairns’ bighearted 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.

On behalf of all the families Redkite helps, I’d like to offer an enormous thank you to Coles, its passionate charity champions and team, and of course generous Cairns customers for the support they have given so far and everything they do in the future. Monique Keighery, CEO Redkite