Plenty Valley Christian College (PVCC) presented over $23,000 to Cancer Council from the Relay for Life event that the school held earlier this year.
School captains Kynan Mason and Nina Theron revealed the final cheque at the school’s assembly on Friday.
Last year’s event raised almost $23,000, but this year’s event was the most the school had raised from its Relay for Life event with a total of $23,740.
The event in March commenced on the school’s oval, with each year level completing laps while holding their handmade banner.
Families then joined later for a range of activities and attractions including food stalls, dunk tank, animal nursery and much more, with a commemorative hour from 8pm to 9pm for a Candlelit Ceremony.
Cancer Council Victoria Community Giving Manager Renee Gani, who came out for the event in March, attended the assembly to congratulate PVCC on the huge amount they raised.
Ms Gani said the amount was a huge achievement from the students.
“I hope that all the students understand that from a school to raise this much money … from the students and having a leadership team of students who ran the event, means that we can continue to invest in research and offer our services to support people that are touched by cancer,” she said.
“We really think it gives people an opportunity to reflect on what cancer means, and not in a scary way, but that it does touch so many people.”
Ms Theron said she was honoured to present such a cheque to an organisation that supports many people touched by cancer.
“It showed the hard work paid off, and we were very, very excited to see the total amount and give that to Cancer Council, because we’ve been doing Relay for Life for many years, and so to give such a big amount has been honourable and very great,” she said.
“It’s amazing to see how much impact we can have on the community and raise so much money.
“As Renee said, every dollar counts towards saving someone and researching how we can prevent cancer from happening in the first place.”
Principal John Metcalfe said he was proud of the students and thanked them and the staff who supported the event.
“In 2018, it was announced that the local community event wasn’t going to run, and our students said, ‘we can do that’, so they’ve been running it since then, and we raised nearly $100,000 over those years,” he said.
“This year we raised a quarter of that $100,000 – it has progressed each year, and it’s getting more and more, it’s going to be pretty hard for next years students to top this one – I’m sure they’ve got their sights set on that.
“We’ve had cancer in our school community, and I think that’s what motivated us in the early days, but is certainly that our school values giving back to the community – that’s one of our values in the college and we want to do that.
“We believe we need to contribute to the community – and this is one of the ways.”
To find more information on Relay for Life, visit www.relayforlife.org.au/.
