A Social Work Support Manager with the Department of Human Services (DHS) in Perth, Jon Wannberg (pictured) has embarked on a fundraising mission to help families with children suffering from cancer.
Mr Wannberg, whose five-year-old son, Ricky, died from brain cancer in 1996, is raising money for childhood cancer research to help other families fighting for their children’s lives.
“My boy was one of three from separate families who passed away from brain cancer within a month of each other — they were really good friends,” Mr Wannberg said.
His colleagues at DHS’s Morley Service Centre were quick to support him and his team with his latest fundraising effort by shaving his head and much loved facial hair, generating more than $1,000 for the cause.
The families who lost their children have established the 3 Boys Legacy, a brain cancer research project administered by the Children’s Leukaemia and Cancer Research Foundation (CLCRF).
“I’m always looking for an opportunity to raise funds for children’s cancer research, whether it’s running a marathon in England or Sweden, or having my beard and head shaved clean here in the Morley Service Centre,” Mr Wannberg said.
Executive Officer of the CLCRF, Wendy Kearns said the quest to find cures for childhood cancer was one of medicine’s greatest success stories.
“Fifty years ago only two per cent of children with cancer survived, and medical research alone has improved overall survival rates to 80 per cent,” Mrs Kearns said.
“However with childhood cancer still the leading cause of death from disease in Australian children, there is more work to be done,” she said.
