Give, Give and More Give

What has a 20km walkathon, a haircut and eating a hot chilli all have in common? These are just a few of the things that the OHI Cambodia team have done to raise funds to fund the costs of this project.

Rebeccca Dinn, a Nurse Manager at Sydney Adventist hospital came up with genius idea of walking from Narrabeen to Palm Beach in Sydney, a mere 20kms away and enlisted Holly Whiston also from the Sydney Adventist Hospital to help her. They designed the course, recruited walkers, organised the catering and generated enthusiasm for the rest of the staff at the hospital.

They did an amazing job and what started out as a Coronary Care Unit and Sydney Adventist staff fund raiser ended up being a family and friends fun day of excerise with a fantastic group of 72 walkers. The best thing to come from the day as well as all the fresh air, exercise and laughter, was the day raised an amazing $32,000 and have sponsored four surgeries this trip and another four in March 2014. That might have to be annnual event for OHI Cambodia!

Madeline Tognini (left) a Paedatriac Nurse at the Mater Children’s Hospital in Brissie used all her Italian family connections to raise the money required for her to travel to Cambodia with the team.

Madeline hosted a trivia night at her parents restaurant in Brisbane and was egged on the crowd to eat at hot chilli at the completion of the evening and raised an extra $400 just for that! Her Uncle Benny Tognini raised $250 by auctioning a haircut, Aunt Yolanda had a “free dress” (mufti) day at Wishart Primary School where she raised another $790 for Madeline’s travel costs. All in all the Tognini family raised enough for 2 trips for Madeline. What a great effort!

The extent of the team’s generosity was highlighted again yesterday when Michelle Hughes from Sydney and Lizzi Kennedy from Perth gave blood at the Angkor Children’s Hospital to help add to the blood bank over here as our week of Cardiac surgeries requires significant amounts of blood and we are all aiming on helping add to the blood bank whilst we are here.

There are many other stories of the lengths that the team and their families have gone to to get to Cambodia. The team’s sacrifices and generosity in giving up their time and money are admirable to say the least but if you ask any of them, they will say that THEY are the ones that are benefitting the most from this experience. Changing the lives of these Cambodian children and their families certainly puts our own lives back at home into perspective!