Foundations Announce Charity Funding
15 January 2015 at 10:07 am
Two large philanthropic Foundations, the Greater Charitable Foundation and The Balnaves Foundation have announced their New Year funding recipients.
Three charities are sharing in $155,000 in additional funding from the Greater Charitable Foundation which was established in 2011 with an initial allocation of $1million by the Greater Building Society.
CEO Anne Long said the Greater Charitable Foundation is providing one off additional funding to three of its current charity partners – Aspect (Autism Spectrum Australia), Starlight Children’s Foundation and Cerebral Palsy Alliance to allow them to continue to help improve the lives of local people.
Aspect will use its funding to help an additional 40 families with newly diagnosed children under its Early Intervention Readiness Program (EIRP). The Foundation said it provided $300,000 to fund the pilot of the program at Aspect’s school in Thornton 2011. This additional funding will bring the total donated to Aspect’s EIRP program to almost $500,000.
Cerebral Palsy Alliance will use the funding to run its 2015 Emerge leadership program for young adults with cerebral palsy and other related disabilities.
Starlight will use its funding to continue to deliver its Captain Starlight program to seven hospitals (Gosford, John Hunter, Maitland, Armidale, Tamworth, Lismore, Tweed) in regional NSW and Gold Coast University Hospital, as well as Wishgranting programs until June 2015.
Long said the Foundation had provided more than $4 million in funding since its inception in 2011. She said the Foundation will call for expressions of interest for its annual funding round in February 2015.
She said Greater Building Society staff will continue to volunteer for the Foundation’s charity partners. Last year, 230 Greater staff volunteered almost 500 hours.
The Balnaves Foundation has awarded funds to two aspiring researchers at Children’s Cancer Institute under the the Balnaves Young Researcher of the Year Award 2014.
Each recipient will receive $100,000 for their projects that could change treatment and survival rates for two of the most common types of childhood cancer.
Dr Jennifer Lynch’s project focuses on targeting an aggressive sub-type of paediatric leukaemia via cellular genetic regulators called long noncoding RNAs – which were previously thought of as nothing more than ‘junk’ DNA.
As well a project by Dr Denise Yu’s aims to identify new targets for neuroblastoma –the most common solid cancer found in infants – by targeting cancer cell metabolic pathways to try and "starve" the cells to death.
Neil Balnaves is a well known philanthropist supporting the next generation of childhood cancer researchers with The Balnaves Foundation’s Young Researcher’s Fund.
The Fund is based on recognising the novel ideas of early career researchers and is designed to provide them the opportunity to diversify their thinking and try something different – which stems from Balnaves’ belief that young, fresh minds are the most likely to achieve a breakthrough.
