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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“Mummy I don’t want to be broken”
For the first time today my little 3 year old begged me to remove her “diabetes”. She asked that her pancreas not be broken – over and over again. In so many ways she is so much older than her 3 years. We can have conversations about what it means to be high or low. She understands what her blood glucose levels should be and can read them on her monitor. She is starting to test herself and discuss the carbohydrate content of the foods she eats. We also discuss fats, sugar and protein. We talk [read more]
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This long weekend, keep safe on the roads
GetUp has launched a programme whereby its members can start their own campaigns using the CommunityRun tool. And here is an important one for all of us, especially in the lead-up to Easter; it’s a campaign to get safer roads. Jess, a GetUp me member from Sydney, has started the campaign in memory of her sister, Sarah, who was tragically killed because a breakdown lane on the Hume Highway didn’t meet minimum standards. Jess writes: A few weeks ago I lost my sister Sarah. No words can describe how hard that is. What makes it worse is knowing [read more]
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Support flood victims in Fiji
We’ve all been shocked to hear of the recent flooding in parts of Fiji. The natural disaster has left many families devastated by the loss of life and loss of their livelihoods. With more than 8,000 locals evacuated to emergency shelters, 2,000 Australians stranded and several people reported dead and missing, Fiji faces very tough times ahead. The untold story is of the thousands of market vendors – 75 per cent of which are women and the sole providers in their families – who have lost their livelihoods, their place of work and their future earnings. Widespread damage to the [read more]
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Wear green for premmies
I gave birth to my first son at 27 weeks gestation weighing 1140 grams. It was a journey unique to us especially being first time parents. We received endless support from our family & friends along the way but something was missing, that feeling of common knowledge & understanding from other parents who truly knew what we had just faced with our son. As a mum, I felt a need to reach out to other parents so one year after our NICU journey ended, L’il Aussie Prems was launched to provide families with an interactive online [read more]
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The toy swap for Starlight Children’s Foundation
I am a Mum of two children, aged 2 and 4, and I looked around my living room after my daughter’s birthday and Christmas last year and couldn’t believe my eyes. Toys, toys and more toys! I felt incredibly lucky that my kids had been given so many gifts, and that we were in a position to have bought some of these, but a little guilty at the same time. Many of the ‘older’ toys were in great condition yet were sitting idle having been usurped by shinier models. There were other unused toys that my children had just grown [read more]
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“I had no idea how my life was about to change.”
Twelve months ago, during the course of her work editing a rugby magazine, my wife came across an image that brought tears to her eyes. When she showed me, it also brought tears to mine. The photo was of a lone rugby player, dressed in the green and gold of our national team, lying on a rugby pitch. It was clear from the positioning of his body that this man was seriously injured. It just didn’t look right. Lying on his left side, the weight of his body was causing him to slump forward, yet his head hung awkwardly behind [read more]
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Could you walk 2000 kilometres in 6 months?
I was sitting at home one day, and I was thinking about how I could make a difference to the world this year. Each year I try to set myself a new challenge and a new way in which I can raise money to help those which are less fortunate than myself. In the past I have raised money for Breast Cancer, Prostate Cancer, the Cancer Council, the Childrens Hospital, the RSPCA, Beyond Blue, and many others. This year, I decided I wanted to do one better. I wanted to go big. And I wanted it to help out the [read more]
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Plates for Mates: Helping Matt Golinski
For me Christmas night is very special, it’s a night I host dinner for family and very close friends. We eat, drink and share special time together that gets locked away in my memory safe. And then there is Boxing Day morning, every year it’s the day for the big clean-up! Unfortunately, Boxing Day just past was very different from any other. I was woken early by a phone call telling me of the terrible tragedy unfolding on the Sunshine Coast. My dear friend, chef, Matt Golinski’s house had burnt down, his wife, Rachel and his daughters [read more]
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Ordinary Australians making the world a better place
“Are you guys crazy?” This is the main question we’ve been asked since our family decided to do a fundraising walk across India over the summer holidays. Walking 800km over six weeks with five kids aged 13 and under, it’s a fair call. The toughest part of the walk was definitely keeping the kids entertained. We’d be half an hour into it and our nine-year-old Maggie’s saying: “Are we there yet?” Of course the kids’ safety and wellbeing was top of mind. Before we left I’d been thrown by a question from a friend – a [read more]
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Pass this on and help to change the stigma of mental illness.
1 in 6 adults suffers from brain-related illness such as depression, bipolar disorder, PTSD and schizophrenia. It’s likely that someone you work with, are related to or share some part of your life with, is suffering right now. Maybe you aren’t even aware of this because of the huge stigma some people still place on mental illness. Bring change 2 mind.org is a national anti-stigma campaign “working to eradicate the stigma and discrimination surrounding mental illness through widely distributed Public Education Materials based on the latest scientific insights and measured for effectiveness”. Click here for more details
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‘Being a typical male almost killed me’
Like most men, I’ve spent a lifetime avoiding doctors and all forms of preventative medical screening tests. Little did I know, that attitude would almost kill me. I was diagnosed with bowel cancer three months before my 55th birthday. It changed the world for me, my wife and 12 year old son. My diagnosis didn’t come about through awareness of bowel cancer. At the time, I didn’t know it was Australia’s second biggest cancer killer or that there’s a government screening program. Bowel cancer can be symptomless, so it was lucky that I had minor pain in my abdomen for [read more]
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Estelle’s Gift Charity Ball
On the 7th of January, my husband Davide and I welcomed into this world our precious daughter Estelle Odoardi Unfortunately due to complications, Estelle was stillborn and is now a little angel in heaven. Since the birth of Estelle, we have felt so blessed and armed with strength, hope and faith we searched for a way in which we could honour Estelle’s memory while assisting others that may have experienced a similar tragedy, as well as creating an awareness of stillbirth. Our strength and ability to make a difference in the name of Estelle is mostly attributed to the unbelievable [read more]
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“I hope to be someone who can make a difference in people’s lives”
What hopes and dreams do you hold for your children’s future? Perhaps it is a hope that they will find a loving relationship, a meaningful job or financial security. Perhaps it is simply that they will find a path that makes them happy. In my line of work as a gender advisor for World Vision Australia, I hear a lot about the hopes and dreams of girls and women in the developing world. And yet, when World Vision recently asked female staff from around the world to share their aspirations, I still found myself a little surprised by how much [read more]
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Support women in Fiji for International Women’s Day
A friend and his family recently took a trip to Fiji. He returned home with stories of decadent resorts, luscious beaches and an itinerary of leisure activities that made me think he might need a holiday to recover from his holiday. However as I listened to him recount his travels, I kept thinking about how different my own experiences had been when I travelled to Fiji for work last year. On the flight from Australia to Nadi, the plane is always full of lively holidaymakers looking forward to a week of vacation bliss. Passengers are getting into the spirit of [read more]
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This is what Multiple Sclerosis looks like
My dear friend Justice Campbell looks like any other 20 (nearly 21) year old out there. She’s blonde, pretty, smart and so funny that some think she should have her own comedy show. Around two years ago, Justice started to experience pins and needles, tingling, numbness, migraines and fatigue that were all treated as being unrelated to one another. Then just over 12 months ago, something happened to tip the scales. “In February, 2011, I travelled to Bali with a group of friends and about half way into the trip I noticed my vision in my left eye was blurry. [read more]
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Mini Shooting Stars: helping kids play sport.
Sabina Clark of Mini Shooting Stars writes: My daughter Aleyah was born premature at 36 weeks weighing 2.01kg and was in special care for two and a half weeks, we didn’t realise that a year later she would be affected by a developmental delay, she was not walking at 18 months and the doctors put it down to a mild form of Cerebral Palsy, she required early intervention, lots of physio and needed to wear AFOs (Ankle foot Orthotic) as well as needing a walking aid. We were told there was a chance she might not walk. In an unknown [read more]
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All babies need full time care, some babies need even more.
Some days you wake up, blissfully unaware that your life is about to change forever. How could I have known, whilst drinking my morning coffee on June 2nd 2010, that my son would end up on life support later that day? He was 10 weeks old. Max was just ‘a little bit off’ that morning. He was a bit grissly, a bit sleepy and a bit pale. Symptoms that were so darn subtle in a 10 week old and nothing catastrophic enough to indicate that a blood vessel in his brain had burst. He had been eating well, sleeping well [read more]
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If you had 27 months to live…
What would you do if you were told you had 27 months to live? In October 2010 Scott was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease (MND) – an insidious disease for which there is no known cause, and no cure. Put very simply your body progressively stops working over a relatively short period of time. I think most of us have wondered what ‘that’ moment in the doctor’s surgery might feel like when you’re given some truly terrible news. Here’s how Scott very eloquently describes it. “Obviously it was an incredible shock. I honestly had no idea [read more]
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For $25 you can restore sight to a person in a third world country.
Sydney Coastrek write “Imagine being a little girl in Nepal and your mum goes blind. She goes blind because she didn’t know about basic hygiene and how to prevent eye infections and there is simply no doctor. And if your mum goes blind, guess what? You stay home to look after her. You don’t go to school, you don’t learn to read and write…the future you may have imagined is sucked away as you need to become her eyes. Or worse still, if you’re a Kenyan child who is born with cataracts, you’ll die within [read more]
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This is why we need CCTV footage
In May last year, an Animals Australia investigation went to air on Four Corners exposing the abuse of cattle in Indonesian slaughterhouses. A huge public outcry followed and it brought about an abrupt (albeit short) termination of live cattle exports to Indonesia pending investigation. Many of us who saw that footage probably thought something along the lines of “Thank God that didn’t happen to the steaks I buy”. Well, unfortunately, you can’t be absolutely sure of that. (You can watch some of that footage here) In late 2011, Animals Australia circulated footage of abattoir workers in Gippsland, Victoria, inflicting gross [read more]