🎪 The Gidgestock Music Festival, located an hour’s drive from Perth, is a community built on connection, compassion, and giving back. Over the years, the grassroots festival has raised almost $50,000 for the Leukaemia Foundation. For their committee member Mireille Tewfik, choosing the Leukaemia Foundation as its beneficiary was deeply personal. In 2014, Mireille was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. During one of the most challenging times of her life, the Leukaemia Foundation stepped in with practical, financial, and emotional support to help with daily living and her ongoing cancer experience. 🗣️ "I was quite overwhelmed when a member of the Leukaemia Foundation called by my bedside to reassure me and explain what the Foundation could offer in support of my recovery. "This went a long way to ease my worries about the journey ahead of me." That support gave Mireille space to heal, and in return, she made a promise to fundraise for the Foundation as long as she was feeling well. ☕ She began with morning teas, and a chance connection at her fundraising cocktail event - where Gidgestock’s music director Jim McGuire was acting as sound technician - led to his introduction of her to festival founders Jo and Steve Mitcham, opening a new door. They invited her to join the Gidgestock committee, on one condition - she could choose the festival’s beneficiary. Mireille didn’t hesitate. "It was the best decision I could have made! It enabled my committee, of which some members had been personally affected by cancer, to run the Kookaburra Boutique, as our way of giving back. "Many attending the festival would call by the Boutique - a second-hand store at the Festival - to purchase, donate and share their stories of personal or family survival. "They felt that purchasing and donating it was a way that they could give back and support a great cause." 🤘 Now, through every ticket sold, every song performed, and every visitor to the Kookaburra Boutique, Gidgestock honours her journey and the more than 150,000 people in Australia living with blood cancer. The Leukaemia Foundation remains at the heart of the festival - not just as a cause, but as a symbol of survival, gratitude, and hope 💙 (fb)

"When Chloe went to have her two stem cell transplants, there was nobody in the world who was a match. Thankfully, my husband and I were able to be donors as 50% matches through a haploidentical transplant." 🎙️ In our latest episode of Talking Blood Cancer, we speak with Melissa Rodger about her daughter Chloe’s diagnosis with acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) at just nine years old. Melissa gives an honest recount of Chloe's initial symptoms, the rapid transition into hospital treatment, and how her family navigated the early days of uncertainty. "I was very concerned with the donations that they take for bone marrow transplants. I did worry that it wouldn't work. And when Chloe relapsed, that really hurt me. "The second transplant, it was never a conversation of 'if'. We did it because we're her parents and we love her." 🎧 Listen to this episode now on Spotify, Good Podcasts, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music or via https://lf.org.au/4cm3ndw. (fb)