Maitland Cancer Appeal are celebrating their 40th birthday this Sunday, March 20 with a $400,000 donation to cancer research, lifting their fundraising total to over $2 million.
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The funds, raised through their Rutherford op shop, will be split up with $100,000 going to four different Newcastle cancer researchers.
Ovarian cancer researcher Dr Nikola Bowden, childrens brain cancer researcher Dr Matt Dunn, pancreatic cancer researcher Dr Hubert Hondermarck and lung cancer researcher Dr Xu Dong Zhang are the recipients of the funds.
The money is being donated in memory of some of the people who have worked with Maitland Cancer Appeal, including Alice Bennis, a founding member who sadly passed away in June, 2021.
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Maitland Cancer Appeal president, Ingrid Heyman, said she is very proud of the local organisation's volunteers and couldn't raise the money without them.
"I'm very proud of our volunteers, we couldn't do it without them, no way," Ms Heyman said.
"They are very important to us, they're the ones who help us keep everything going, and we couldn't do it without the community either.
"What we're very proud of is the fact we have raised so much money for such a small amount of people."
Ms Heyman said the volunteers and committee feel strongly about raising funds for cancer research because, like many others in the world, they have had family suffering with cancer.
"It's very important to donate to cancer research," she said.
"My mother passed away to cervical cancer and that's what made me interested."
Ms Heyman said their organisation started in 1982, raising money through raffle tickets and market days with a lot of cooking before they evolved into having an op shop.
"We had a donor give us some money many many years ago towards buying our own building, and eventually we had enough money to buy the building we're in now which was wonderful," she said.
"The main event of our op shop is our laundry service for the terminally ill out the back, that was Alice's baby.
"The linen service started on September 2, 1995 at John Street East Maitland, next door to the gaol.
"It's the shop itself that raises all this money and the volunteers that do all the work to keep the shop going."
The organisation are donating the funds and celebrating their 40th birthday at Maitland City Bowling club on Sunday, March 20, with past and present volunteers.