Over the past year our support services team has grown further in size. This means we have been able to expand our services and reach considerably more patients and families. This coming year we plan to continue this service growth. This will include offering more regional and geographically spread educational and support groups, and a wider range of disease-specific and carer groups.
Advocacy is a significant part of our support and we are committed to our work in this area. Alongside advocating for the larger national and regional matters there are always issues that arise for patients and their families that we are committed to lobbying for, and where possible, solving on their behalf. We are also constantly working collaboratively with other cancer non-governmental organisations and DHB’s across the country and remain encouraged by the effective progress we have been making together.
In 2014 LBC allocated a significant investment to fulfil the long held vision to establish New Zealand’s first Leukaemia & Blood Cancer Research Unit. Located at the University of Auckland, the unit has made steady progress with a growing team and number of projects now underway. Areas of particular focus are in understanding genetic changes in leukaemia and how those changes may affect therapy choices and improve outcomes for patients. Alongside this is understanding how certain genetic targets in leukaemia may lead to discoveries in targeting drugs. We will report on this further throughout the year.
A large portion of funding that enables this investment into research, patient support, advocacy and awareness comes through our key fundraising events. Shave for a Cure is one of LBC’s core fundraising events and every year we are blown away by the brave people willing to help us find a cure for blood cancers and support our work. Once again, we are very grateful to have Farmers on board. Farmers significantly support our work by holding numerous Shave events in their stores around the country as well as huge generosity with other gifts and activities throughout the year.
The Firefighter Sky Tower Stair Challenge is another of LBC’s core fundraising events and the 2015 event was an absolute record-breaker. We were thrilled to see firefighters across the country raise over $1 million dollars! We are deeply humbled to see the brigades are already steadily fundraising for this year’s event in May.
SKYCITY Dining for a Difference will be back again this year and will be held on October the 8th. This is always such a wonderful fundraiser for us and only possible thanks to the generosity of SKYCITY and the dedication and commitment of Peter Gordon.
With so many things happening on the LBC calendar this year we wanted to say thank you to all of LBC’s long-time supporters who enable us to continue our work to help patients and their families.
We are so very grateful to Farmers, SKYCITY, Fidelity Life, Suzuki, PwC and Bell Gully as well as all our individual supporters.
We look forward to another fulfilling year and thank you so much for supporting our work.