On Friday 7 April, Canberra Grammar School students and teachers gathered in the Senior School Quad to support the World’s Greatest Shave, a fundraising initiative for the Leukaemia Foundation which aims to raise money every year through brave volunteers shaving or colouring their hair.
To support the initiative, CGS Year 12 students and staff sacrificed their hair to create a greater awareness within the community of what many patients got through when receiving chemotherapy or radiation.
School Captain, Ben McGinness said that ‘we want to use this experience to raise some well needed funds in support of the Leukaemia Foundation and the valuable work it does to support those undergoing treatment, and to support their families’.
CGS Teacher, Ms Janet O’Dell-Teys also underwent a head shave at this year’s event after promising in 2015 to shave her head if CGS’s Eddison House raised enough money for the World’s Greatest Shave, which they successfully did.
Leukaemia is a progressive disease in the bone marrow and other blood forming organs which cause the body to suppress the production of normal blood cells. Though there are treatments for this disease there is no discovered cure. Every day in Australia 34 people are diagnosed with a blood related cancer. You can find out more on the Leukaemia Foundation’s website.