Mamamia Cares
If you are part of a charitable organisation and would like to be featured on MM
just drop us a note at info@mamamia.com.au
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How a talking teddy-bear is helping this mum with cancer …
In late 2011 Rebecca Weeding married the love of her life, Robert, with their two gorgeous children Maddy (seven) and Cohan (two) by their side. She was 25-years old. Two months later, in January 2012, Rebecca was diagnosed with astrocytoma, a slow growing 7.5cm inoperable stage two brain-swelling tumor, a malignant cancer. Incredibly Rebecca didn’t feel sick and the enormity of her diagnosis didn’t quite register until she told her family and friends. Telling her dad and her seven-year-old daughter Maddy were the hardest. The doctors told Rebecca that the tumour had been growing in her [read more]
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Unvaccinated kids up 500%. Will you sign the pledge?
By MIA FREEDMAN It’s astonishing – and utterly terrifying – to think we could be seeing a return to outbreaks of incurable diseases such as whooping cough, polio and measles. But with the shocking news this week that the number of parents registering ‘conscientious objection’ and refusing to vaccinate their children has sky-rocketed. According to reports: LEADING scientists say the anti-immunisation lobby is endangering children’s lives because of the soaring number of parents refusing to vaccinate. The number of Australian babies not fully immunised is now one in 12 and parents registering a conscientious objection has leapt [read more]
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Take Action for National Skin Cancer Action Week
This week is National Skin Cancer Awareness Week – and it’s time to take action.
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Cruise for Mates: Holiday for a cause
By JANELLE BLOOM Six celebrity chefs, two luxury European River Cruises, one unbreakable bond of friendship – in aid of burns survivor, Matt Golinski. This post is about the chance to enjoy a holiday, river cruising through France or from Amsterdam to Budapest in 2013 with three crazy chefs on board each cruise! I’ll tell you more about that later, but firstly, I wanted to say a huge thank you to you the readers of Mamamia and iVillage (not to mention Mia, Lana & staff). When I posted a blog here earlier this year about my friend Matt Golinski and [read more]
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The McGrath Foundation: Supporting women with breast cancer
by KYLEA TINK For just over 4 years now, I’ve been the CEO at the McGrath Foundation and in many ways, it was a role I fell into because someone I knew, and liked, needed help. By no means is this the cookie-cutter, rat race to green grass transition. I had a wonderful career and enjoyed my time as a PR consultant – travelling to New York, Singapore and London, meeting some incredible people such as Donald Rumsfeld and Teddy Kennedy and working on campaigns and brand stories I truly believed in and felt part of. As one of the [read more]
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Women are all the same…
by DI BOWLES It sounds obvious but I first realised women have the same priorities and desires when I went on my own “Eat, Pray, Love” trip around the world. It started in the same way as Elizabeth Gilbert’s trip in the book – completely self-absorbed. I had been moving up the corporate ladder in the US. But I needed something more, something bigger in my life. So, I sold my house and headed out on the backpacker trail. I was fascinated to find that the women I met in each country I visited all talked about the same things. I [read more]
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Thankyou Water – a social enterprise making waves
By SARAH PRESCOTT Most people think bottle water is a little bit silly. Ironically, so does Dan Flynn, founder of bottled water social enterprise, Thankyou Water. “Why pay two to three dollars for something that we can all get from the tap for free? The thing is, we like the convenience of water, a healthy alternative to soft drink, and so sometimes we are willing to pay for it,” says Flynn. By tapping into the $600M bottled water market in Australia, Flynn, along with his co-founders Justine Flynn and Jarryd Burns, has established a social enterprise that exists solely to [read more]
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Research for a world without breast cancer.
More than 35 women are diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia every day. Each of these women can receive a treatment which has been proven safe and effective through the clinical trials research process. Because of this research, the likelihood they will survive longer and free of breast cancer is higher than at any other time in history. The Australia and New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group (ANZBCTG), supported by its fundraising department Breast Cancer Institute of Australia, has for over 30 years conducted Australia’s only collaborative clinical trials research program for the treatment, prevention and cure of breast cancer. [read more]
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This life-long chronic disease has no cure. Here’s how you can help find one.
by LAURA BRODNIK On a sunny day in May, Brisbane mother Dominique Bain was joyfully preparing to celebrate her son Archer’s first birthday. However, the discovery of some frightening symptoms saw him rushed to hospital before the family had a chance to celebrate. What followed was the stuff of nightmares for the young mother; with the news Archer had been diagnosed with a life-long chronic disease, for which there is no cure. The fear in Dominique’s voice was unmasked as she recounted the events of that day and the journey her family has undertaken ever since. [read more]
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Pink Hope & Revlon: Together for Bright Pink Lipstick Day
Women all over the country are coming together to pucker up for Bright Pink Lipstick Day. On September 28th, 2012, with the support of Revlon, women will be asked to wear a bright pink lipstick as a fun and funky way to raise awareness of genetic breast and ovarian cancer. Pink Hope is a registered charity, established and founded by Krystal Barter in 2009 whilst recovering from her preventative double mastectomy. Krystal was only 22 years old when she discovered she had the BRCA1 gene fault that gave her an 85% chance of developing [read more]
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Let’s Do It In A Dress.
by CHANTELLE BAXTER Poke your head in any club house at the end-of-footy-season booze-up and you’ll be sure to see it: blokes in dresses. Dressing up is funny. The fact that a girl born in Sierra Leone is more likely to be sexually assaulted than she is to attend high school: not funny at all. And that’s what Do It In A Dress is all about: helping the world’s poorest women and girls by wearing a school dress. My Story: I have seen first hand that when a girl is educated, everything changes. She’ll marry later, have a smaller, healthier [read more]
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Fairy Tales for Hope.
by SALLY HEPPLESTON When I posted on Facebook on August 1 this year that I was going to take part in the Instagram photo a day challenge to help me get through what is always the most difficult month of the year, my friend and talented artist Tonia Composto said she could go one better. For the past four years, August hasn’t been kind to me. And not just because I live in Melbourne where the winters are long, dreary and cold. On August 19 2008, my first child Hope was stillborn at 40 weeks and 5 days after [read more]
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Go Bare to give women the basics.
From the moment a girl is born into extreme poverty, she is too often destined to live a life of hardship and disadvantage. For her, the very basics can be out of reach – healthcare, education, and the right to make decisions over her own body and life. We are all aware of the devastating effects of extreme poverty in Africa. Sometimes the issue can seem so vast and overwhelming that when we want to help, it’s hard to know where to start. So what can you do? Go back to the basics and Go Bare! Marie Stopes International Australia [read more]
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Let’s talk about sex.
Did the headline get your attention? Hopefully it did, because that was really half the point of including the word ‘sex’ in a post about preventing cervical cancer. Although to be fair, sex does have a lot to do with cervical cancer, so the headline wasn’t just a cheap marketing ploy. Many women in Australia don’t realise that cervical cancer is one of the most preventable cancers. In fact, up to 90% of cervical cancer diagnoses are avoidable with two-yearly Pap tests (smears). Despite this good news, only around 60% of eligible Australian women are screening as recommended under the [read more]
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A fun day out for Vinnies Kids.
Pumping the pulse? Firing farts? Children’s theatre show Health Havoc is offering a fun and educational way for Sydney’s children to explore the human body these September school holidays as a part of the Sydney Fringe Festival. Working alongside St Vincent de Paul Society, Health Havoc has made a donation of 30 tickets (the cash equivalent of approximately $600) to the Vinnies Youth Services through the Sydney, Parramatta, Broken Bay and Wollongong area, providing children and their families the opportunity to see the show free of charge. Full of friendship, trust, teamwork, snot, stomach juices and farts, Health Havoc is [read more]
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There is no cure for this syndrome.
Abby is a beautiful three year old whose eyes, smile and giggles light up a room and make you feel good whenever you are near her, however she cannot voice her thoughts, dreams and needs as she has Rett Syndrome. Rett Syndrome is a relatively rare but serious neurological disorder occuring primarily in females. Most cases of Rett syndrome are caused by a mutation on the MECP2 gene, which is found on the X chromosome. In most cases the female baby will appear to develop normally however sometime during the 6-18 month mark the normal [read more]
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‘How do I get out of this?’
by JO ABI I have spent more hours than I care to remember in the emergency room at Westmead Children’s Hospital. With my first child I was there every month it seems. He was three-months-old and caught a cold. He had so much snot in his little nose I was worried he couldn’t breathe! Thankfully they didn’t laugh at me. They patiently cleared his nose, assured me he would be fine and sent me home. When he was three he caught a gastric bug and they wanted a stool sample. I had to catch it in a jar before [read more]
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Spring clean, sell it and help fight cancer
The days are getting lighter and the flowers are starting to spring into action. Yep, winter is finally ending and the warmer months are within our reach. September is the perfect time to trawl through the cupboards, clear the clutter and start things a fresh through a little bit of Spring Cleaning. This September Cancer Council NSW is encouraging individuals to spring clean for a good cause by selling your preloved possessions through an online sale, car-boot sale, vintage market, or a good old fashion garage sale and donating some or all of the proceeds [read more]
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The documentary you need to see.
by GRACE BOWE Ever loved what you were reading in the weekend papers so much, you had to read it out loud to your partner? Yep, that’s me to a tee. I’m now taking my inbuilt need to share to a whole new level. Last month I saw a brilliant and life changing film. I want to share this film so much I have organised a public screening of it. So what’s the film? It’s called Miss Representation and premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. The film explores the way in which the misrepresentation of women in media has [read more]
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Make a difference in the fight to stopping childhood cancers.
by MELANIE HEARSE The image of a cheeky three year old Elliot Parish, caught with remnants of the Milo he’d been drinking spread across his cheeks, and a somber frown in place at having the moment captured, has become symbolic of the charity started in his honour, the Telethon Adventurers. Established by the Parish’s and former AFL star Peter Wilson in 2010, their ultimate goal is finding a cure for childhood cancer which took their youngest son Elliot’s life in February of 2011, when he was only four years old. Emily explained in May 2009, [read more]