Balmoral Swim: More than 1000 swimmers to hit the water in this year’s charity event.

By JACK KELLY

For its 33rd consecutive year, scores of people will be diving into the ocean for the annual Balmoral Swim this Sunday.

The charity event has helped raise almost $2 million for the Children’s Cancer Institute for two decades.

This year, the aim is to raise $200,000 for children with cancer with Children’s Cancer Institute’s Director of Marketing & Fundraising, Anne Johnston, believing this goal is easily achievable in the hands of the Balmoral Swim organisation.

“This is the 33rd year that the swim has run. And for the last 20 years, Children’s Cancer Institute has benefited from that swim,” Ms Johnston said.

Over 1000 people, including 10 schools with 462 kids, will be participating in either the one-kilometre swim around the bay, the School Relay Challenge, or the Balmoral Team Challenge.

Although the event allows for swimmers of all ages to participate, the foundations of the event are largely centred around kids.

The Children’s Cancer Institute was created almost 50 years ago after parents with children who were diagnosed with cancer decided there needed to be more funded research towards the disease.

Co-founder of the Institute Jack Kasses said the swim has been an essential part of their organisation’s work saving children’s lives.

“They [The Balmoral Swim Club Committee] were so impressed with the advances we were making at that time, and they agreed that our institute would be the one that they’d like to support with the Balmoral swim.

“They’ve now exceeded over $2 million in contribution towards research at the institute and they’ve been a solid partner, every step of the way,” he said.

Almost 50 years ago, Mr Kasses’ daughter was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia, a cancer that at the time only saw a 30 per cent survival rate.

Fortunately, his daughter survived – and is celebrating her 55th birthday this weekend – but only due to some drastic moves from the family.

“We were living in Queensland sugar cane country town called Childers when our daughter Helen was diagnosed with leukaemia,” he said.

“Because other children in the town had sadly passed away, our specialist doctor suggested that we might come to the Sydney Children’s Hospital… which was a huge move for our family, we were 1000 kilometres away.”

“And so, we came down to Sydney in 1976 and Helen began three years of treatment.”

Although doctors were beginning to pioneer treatments of chemotherapy and radiotherapy for the first time, there was still little to no research undertaken into childhood leukaemia and cancer and as a result, lots of kids did not survive treatment.

It was at that time Mr Kasses met John Lough – whose son Robbie was also diagnosed with the disease – and decided that it was time to raise funds for childhood cancer research to take place here in Australia.

“We felt that research was so important that we convinced Apex Australia to run a nationwide fundraising campaign, which raised $1.3 million, at that time and was worth about $8 million today.

“With that money, we built the first stage of the Children’s Cancer Institute, and we began for the first time undertaking full-time research into the illnesses.”

There is now a nine out of ten children survival rate for those diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukaemia, largely thanks to the support of the Children’s Cancer Institute.

Today, the Children’s Cancer Institute is expanding its Zero Childhood Cancer program which searches for targeted treatments for genetic changes to increase the survival rate of children with aggressive cancer.

“That will be up to 1000 children who have their cancer cells and medication properly scrutinised by the scientists and in conjunction with the doctors as well.

“It’s called pertinent personalised medicine and it’s really changing the survival rate to an even greater rate,” Mr Kasses said.

The charity co-founder is every day, extremely grateful his daughter survived.

The Balmoral Swim is one of the largest community fundraising initiatives that the Children’s Cancer Institute has benefited from.

If you want to help contribute to the Institute’s research and ensure these tragedies don’t happen to other children, then come down for a swim on Sunday.

You can register on the Balmoral Swim website HERE, with events beginning at 8:15 am.