Sales from a local recipe book have provided Horsham Relay for Life committee the opportunity to present a $4000 cheque to Wimmera Cancer Centre.
The committee’s Fightback coordinator Lorinda Buckman said many people viewed Relay For Life donations as supporting cancer but not necessarily doing that locally.
“Relay For Life is about celebrating people with cancer and their families and friends,” Mrs Buckman said.
“It’s about everyone coming to gather to fight cancer and raise important funds for the Cancer Council of Victoria but we decided as a committee we wanted to something with a completely local focus,” she said.
“So we decided to produce a healthy recipe book using local recipe ideas that were easy to prepare.
“It’s for people who don’t want to spend forever in the kitchen.”
Ms Buckman said she was overwhelmed by the number of recipes she received from the Horsham community.
“My role on the committee as Fightback coordinator is around promoting a healthy lifestyle so the dream was for a healthy recipe book to raise funds for the cancer centre,” she said.
“We never imagined we would be presenting a cheque for $4000 but that is what we have achieved today.”
Wimmera Cancer Centre manager Carmel O’Kane said she was constantly overawed by the generous support the centre received from the community.
“Relay for Life already does an amazing job supporting people with cancer but they’ve gone above and beyond with this project,” Ms O’Kane said.
“I can’t thank them enough.”
Ms O’Kane said the funding was likely to be channelled towards ongoing programs supporting people with cancer, such as the centre’s therapeutic musician.