Can Assist Treasurer Julie Smart in green shirt. Sammy Leathem Rugby committee member presenting the donation. Also pictured on the far right is Tri-Colours President Wayne Berkrey. Photo Lynn Spain.
The Cootamundra Tri-Colours very generously donated $2000 to Cootamundra’s Can Assist Branch recently. The donation preceded the Tri-Colours game against the Boorowa Goldies and was made possible by the money the Club raised during their ladies’ day.
Acting President Colleen Flynn said, “Can Assist has no government funding at all whatsoever. So we exist on donations and fundraising that we do all the time. The Cootamundra Can Assist is in its 41st year of being in Cootamundra and all that time it has operated in the same manner.”
“We have several things that we do regularly, like a barbecue in the street on the last Friday of the month. We usually take part in things like the Swap Meet and the Christmas parades and all those sorts of things, they are fairly standard for us.
“Then we are offered other opportunities like the Gun Club, which has a couple of events a year, and they ring us and say, do you want to provide lunch for us? The Antique Car Club has meetings where we provide afternoon tea. It’s just little things that keep us out and about. Then, very kindly, there are several people in this town who give us donations, like the Rugby Club with $2,000.
“That’s a tremendous amount of money that helps so many people. We have a lot of people who give us donations like that, a lot of organisations, as well as solitary members of the public who give us a regular donation, some might be $100 and some might be as much as $2,000. It’s pretty impressive. We give back to the community anything up to about $80,000 a year. That’s for people who have been diagnosed and are receiving treatment.
“The fundraising events that we take part in, we always buy from our local suppliers. We never send any money outside of town.
“We’ve recently just helped out Adina Care, with refurbishing some of their palliative care room. Everything was bought within our community, the local furniture shops and whatever else was needed. We make sure that if the money can stay within Cootamundra it does.
“We distribute about $80,000 annually, it used to be 80 or more, but the Riverina Cancer Care Centre, which is where most people go for their treatment is now government funded, whereas that was a privately owned treatment centre before, and that’s where a big chunk of our costs came from, but now that is government funded, that has made a huge difference to the amount of money that we have to help people with their travelling costs and their pharmacy costs and anything that we feel that we can help with.
“The only time we would stop is if they call us and say we don’t need your help anymore, or some people, unfortunately, pass away. “There are ladies who started in Can Assist 41 years ago, and they are still involved. While it is wonderful that these ladies are with us, we desperately need younger volunteers.
“We’ve got people who are still working with us, selling raffle tickets, doing whatever they can do who are in their late 80s.
“If we can’t attract young people, Can Assist will go away because it’s all voluntary based, it will disappear if people don’t see it as being something that they could give us a little bit of time to be part of.
“We appreciate that it’s not possible for young people who’ve got children and have after-school commitments, because we do most of our work Monday to Friday and we understand that. We’re looking to attract people in their 60s rather than their 70s.
“There are people who are close to retirement who might have a bit of time, we wouldn’t turn anyone away if they were in their 70s.
“We need to be able to attract some younger people to make sure this stays, to make sure it remains working, because there’s a big gap in what the government pays or what people can afford without something like Can Assist.
“There are only 57 branches of Can Assist in New South Wales. It’s not in any other state. If you live in a small country town that doesn’t have a Can Assist, you might be up for $20,000-$30,000 to meet your medical costs for cancer diagnosis, so it is really important to keep Can Assist going.”
Cootamundra Rugby Club President Wayne Berkrey was more than happy to see the money go to a good cause. “We’re travelling well as a Club, so we decided based on how well the ladies’ day turned out and the amount of money we were able to raise that we’d give it to a good cause, and there’s no greater than Cootamundra Can Assist.
“It’s a shame that on the day we gave them the money, it was a pretty miserable one, cold weather, poor footy and cold pies, luckily on the day we raised the money, it was the opposite and we were able to raise a decent amount of money.
“We’ve done work in the past with them and in the future, we plan on doing more with them; they do great work in the community.”The Cootamundra community continues to band together to help each other out.
-Tully Potts
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