The Can Assist Lithgow branch celebrating 10 years of helping locals facing cancer.
What started as a conversation with friends at a regular bowls game forever changed how Lithgow locals access cancer support services.
Lithgow’s Can Assist marked their 10th anniversary on Friday, April 4 with a social gathering, like the one that started it all, but larger.
According to Secretary of Can Assist Lithgow, Lesley Townsend, founding member, the late Noela Williams advised her bowling friends that Maree Statham (Lithgow Can Assist’s President) was searching for volunteer members to form a Lithgow branch.
“Maree’s Mum was part of the Bathurst branch of Can Assist, and Bathurst were helping Lithgow clients, but it was getting a bit much for them, so they wanted to form one in Lithgow,” Ms Townsend said.
“We had a brief meeting at the council chambers in 2013, but it didn’t go very well, so we tried again in 2014, and that’s when we formed.”
Ms Townsend said membership numbers have been steadily growing over the past decade.
“It’s just grown. We started with four or five founding members, and now we’ve got 23 active members in our group,” she said.
“It’s a very worthy cause that has struck a lot of people’s hearts because so many people in Lithgow are struck down by cancer.”
Ms Townsend said in the early days, members would relentlessly fundraise to support their clients.
“We started off absolutely fundraising out of our minds. We had to because we had no money and we got no help from the government,” she said.
“We started off helping people by doing barbecues and all sorts of things. The fundraising we did in the early stages was just phenomenal.
“We never stopped and just kept going until we got so much money behind us.”
Ms Townsend said there were different ways of supporting locals with cancer once the fundraising had accumulated enough to start, with the limit increasing as Can Assist received more donations.
“We were able to offer them a limit of $500 for medication, help towards their accommodation costs if they had to have treatment, travel allowances, food vouchers for people who were unable to feed themself because of the costs,” Ms Townsend said.
“Slowly, we started to get a bit more help, and then Clarence Colliery came onboard with their employee donations that they take out of their pay to help us.”
“That started to help us a bit more, so we could offer more money. It went to $750 per client, then to $1000, and now it’s $3000 that we help.”
Ms Townsend said the congeniality of their clients heartens the group.
“We’re so humbled by the attitude of people, because people are just so thankful. We’re happy to ease their stress just a little bit,” Ms Townsend said.
“Most of us have been touched by cancer, either our partners, our children or ourselves. Out of the 23 or so people we have, I’d say 20 of us have been affected by cancer in some way.
“So it gives us a real sense of being able to help and support.”
According to Ms Townsend, the event to mark the 10th anniversary of Can Assist Lithgow was intimate as it was more a moment of reflection and a catch-up for the members than broadcasting their achievements.
“We don’t expect people to thank us, we didn’t want to be out there and be like ‘Look at what we’ve done.’ We didn’t want it to be like that at all, we just wanted it to be within our group,” Ms Townsend said.
“It was just a social get-together, a thank you and a bit of a pat on the back for us.”
westernadvocate.com.au
April 22 2025
