Our Story

Its history, activities, services, aims and needs.

In 1978, following the diagnosis of breast cancer, a local woman, Rosemary Fogarty, visited her sister in the USA where she experienced the supportive nature of a newly founded cancer support group and on her return to Newcastle commenced efforts to form a similar group here.

With the assistance of a local service club, a public meeting was held in the Newcastle City Mission on 20 October 1978. A committee was formed which was given the expressed task of establishing a supporting organisation catering to the various needs of people facing a life-threatening illness. Such an organisation was not available within the health-care system.

Over the years since that inaugural meeting the organisation, as it is today, evolved. In the initial period it was based solely on voluntary activities from which grew the many functions now performed. Originally, the base for activities was the homes of members but when office space was obtained at Christo Road Private Hospital the group was able to consolidate those activities and enter into a period of training and expansion of services. In 1993 we moved to premises in Smith Street Charlestown and then in 2004 to our current location at 44 Dudley Road, Charlestown. The organisation was incorporated and registered as a charity in 1988. It is governed by a management committee elected annually, and operates under a Constitution approved under the Act at the time of incorporation.

Funding

Make Today Count receives an annual grant from the NSW Health Department which covers approximately 50% of our running costs. The remainder has to be drawn from fundraising activities, donations and membership subscriptions. Our volunteers bear the cost of their own efforts which, if costed at the prevailing rates of pay, represents a huge saving on government expenditure.

The need for an assured income is of the utmost importance if the present services offered to the community by Make Today Count are to be maintained and continued. Such an assured income would allow the maximum benefit to be available to those who use the services of Make Today Count, without an increasing burden falling on the shoulders of the volunteer carers. To anticipate that the high quality of this service should be maintained by relying on the goodwill and empathy of our volunteers is expecting a level of dedication which is becoming more difficult to find.

It is only by ensuring that already successful support organisations such as Make Today Count continue to operate, that our society will be able to cope with the trauma of those situations over which there appears to be little control.