Alex Acres of the Joshua Foundation recently made a presentation at the Rotary Club of Southam's Tuesday lunchtime meeting at the Fox & Hen Bascote.
Joshua Foundation Oz Experience 2011 - Alex Acres:
The Joshua Foundation is a small charity based in Cardiff, Wales. The charity was established in 1998 by Sarah Cornelius and her family in memory of her son Joshua who sadly died of Cancer in 1996. The charity fundraises through schemes such as the Oz Experience and the Miss Wales Beauty Pageant to provide experiences for children with Cancer; these could be trips to Disneyland, London or Alton Towers, whatever they wish. These experiences are not just for the children, what many people forget is the families are effected as much as the child. The mothers and fathers who lose children, the brothers and sisters who lose siblings, these experiences are for the family as much as they are for the children. The days out not only give the children invaluable time away from the hospitals they also give their family memories that they will be able to cherish forever.
Many people may not know exactly what Cancer is or how it affects the body. Cancer is a disease in which cells within the body have become damaged or mutated, these damaged cells can begin to replicate at a dangerous rate. These fast replicating cells can form growths or tumours which can affect individual organs or the entire body. As of yet there is no ‘Cure’ for Cancer, the current treatments used to treat Cancer are Radiotherapy and Chemotherapy. Radiotherapy uses concentrated radiation to destroy the cancerous cells. Chemotherapy uses a mixture of drugs designed to destroy fast replicating cells, this also has the unfortunate side effect of damaging the cells of the patients’ hair.
The treatment for children with Cancer has improved greatly in recent years; twenty years ago almost all children with the disease would have died before they were diagnosed. The treatments have become far more intensive, requiring a greater investment of equipment, drugs and time in hospital but the results speak for themselves as now nearly 70% of children survive their illness and continue to live long, full lives.
During my time in Australia I visited The Royal Childrens Hospital in Melbourne to visit the Cancer Research Centre where they are researching new treatments for Cancer as well as visit some of the Children with varying degrees of Cancer. When I went into the hospital I had expected to find a ward of very sick children, very cold and silent, each hooked up to machines with dwindling vital signs. What I found in reality was a ward of children running around, playing games and having fun; frankly it seemed that the carers were having trouble keeping up with them. These children do not want pity, they simply wish to be treated as normal children and those who do not have much time treat every day as special and do not take anything for granted.
The majority of my time in Australia was spent conducting Conservation Work with Conservation Volunteers Australia (CVA), a charity based in the remote town of Bendigo in the state of Victoria in Southern Australia. CVA is a non-profit organisation who recruits volunteers from all over the world to come to Australia and assist families and small businesses in animal reserves and farmland affected by natural disasters. Australian Soaps like Neighbours and Home and Away may give the impression that Australia is warm and sunny all year round but I know from visiting Melbourne in the middle of winter that they are lying. I found that you can always tell who the British tourists are based on the fact that they are wearing shorts and T-shirts in the middle of Australian winter.
I spent my time with CVA repairing fences which had been knocked over by the flooding. While the fences seemed effective at keeping livestock in I don’t think they were as effective at keeping wild animals out because as soon as we finished putting up one of the fences a Kangaroo hopped straight over the five foot tall fence as though it were nothing!
One of the main natural disasters which had affected Australia was the ‘Black Saturday’ bush fires which swept across Victoria in 2009. The main cause of these bush fires was that the natural plants of Australia have adapted to survive bushfires, they burn very quickly with little heat and the ashes give the nutrients for the new plants to grow. However the Australian environment has been changed by the plants introduced by the colonists, the European plants burn very hot and very slowly and when combined with the natural Australian plants the fires can become very difficult to control. This is what happened on Black Saturday; a few small fires quickly grew into an inferno which spread across the state. The fires very nearly wiped out Bendigo, the place where I was staying, which was only saved by a sudden change in the wind direction.
One of the many people affected by these fires were a couple who ran an animal shelter just outside Bendigo, sadly the shelter was destroyed by the fires. Despite spending all of their savings rebuilding the shelter the couple are currently still living in a shipping container as all of their money had been used in helping the animals injured by the fires. They will hopefully be moving into their new home within the next few months thanks to the help of charities like CVA.
Though despite the hardship Bendigo still continues and I found it a wonderful place. The only downside was that the Scout Camp I was staying in had no heating in the middle of winter, with temperatures dropping below freezing, and we had no heating in the rooms. It was an amazing place to stay in the middle of the Australian bush and there are very few places in the world where you can wake up to find a Kangaroo drinking out of the toilets, and they make very delicious sausages.
But I did not write this to tell you about Kangaroos drinking out of toilets. The reason I am writing this article is to hopefully inspire some of you to give help to some of these Charities in any way you can. The main thing that would help is simply raising awareness of the charities and the situation in Australia, when I talked to most people in the UK they did not know of the Joshua Foundation or the true extent of the situation in Australia. It was only with the support of other charitable organisations such as the Southam Rotary Club that I was able to help some of the children who are affected by Cancer. I hope that charities and individual people will continue to help Oz Kids in the future so that they too can travel the world doing a little bit of good.
http://www.thejoshuafoundation.co.uk
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