CQUniversity Sydney participated in the inaugural Eastern Suburbs Relay For Life which was held over the weekend of May 16-17 at Sydney's beautiful Centennial Park.

Relay For Life is a fun, outdoor and overnight fundraising event where teams of 10 to 15 people take turns walking or running around a local oval over a 24 hour period to raise funds for cancer research, education, support services and advocacy. Relay For Life is for all ages.

Sydney Campus team members included Peter Adams, Gagan Malik, Meagan Johnson, Satish Deo, Natasha Prime, Lucy Low, Nicolene White and Susan Loomes

Relay For Life honours those whose lives have been touched by cancer and aims to celebrate life and create hope by joining friends, family, cancer survivors and their carers in the common goal of defeating cancer.  Whilst each of us has friends and family who have been effected by cancer, CQUniversity Sydney's motivation for participating in Relay For Life was in support of all that The Cancer Council does.

The day started off incredibly windy but once the campsite was established the team members were ready to go to the Opening Ceremony. 

Melinda Schneider brought everyone to tears when she sang Courageous and the guest speaker Carmen Duncan shared her own journey and battle with both breast cancer and more recently colon cancer. 

Formalities and speeches over, cancer survivors and their carers started the relay off, enthusiastically led by the SambaNinjas band.  

SambaNinjas led the event

CQUniversity Sydney's team joined in on the next lap along with relay members from the other 39 teams and the Relay was underway. 

To their credit, and as suggested, the campus team managed to have a team member on the track at all times until well into the night.

Two members braved the cold weather conditions and camped out overnight, but were back out walking on the track at 5.30am on Sunday morning.  By 8am they had been joined by some fellow CQUniversity Sydney team members and they walked until the Closing Ceremony at 10am.

Both little kids and big kids alike were entertained with live performances, some had their faces painted, some competed in hula hoop competitions and some participated in workshops on drumming, kite making and bugs.

There were various food stalls and a wonderful community atmosphere.

The campus team in action

CQUniversity Sydney held its own BBQ inviting friends of team members to encourage and motivate.

Thanks go to everyone who made donations and supported team CQUniversity Sydney and a big thanks go to the registered team members: (students) Gagan Malik, Fozlul Chowdhury, Saeed Shalbafan and his wife Naisana Asli; (staff) Susan Loomes, Meagan Johnson, Natasha Prime, Peter Adams, Susan Robertson, Alison Owens, Alan McPhail, Satish Deo and Nicolene White for their enthusiasm and commitment.

In total, the Eastern Suburbs Relay For Life raised over $75,000 of which CQUniversity Sydney's team contributed approximately $2000.

Relay For Life was a wonderful community event for our students and staff to be involved in and we are already talking about and planning for next year's event.