It was wonderful for Steve Roach, our guest speaker and CEO of Myeloma Australia, to be recognized with a Paul Harris Fellow (see images above & below). Along with his head office team and band of committed oncology nurses, the team are an amazing support to the 18,000 people around Australia that have been diagnosed with Myeloma, which is an incurable blood cancer. It was even more special to see our own Peter Allen being awarded another Sapphire PH award for his ongoing chair of the RCC ROMP Committee working with Myeloma Australia (see story below for more details).
ROMP at the RCC Meeting this week 10th March, 2021 |
What a great opportunity it was for the ROMP Committee to meet this week at our normal Weds dinner night!!
Although we have been meeting via zoom every week for the last 12 months during the pandemic, we had never met everyone in the same room in person!!! What with Peter O'Brien from Myeloma Aust also in the team, it was a reunion of sorts, and an opportunity to share our stories and achievements over the last year with this Rotary Club of Camberwell centenary-endorsed project.
It was wonderful for Steve Roach our guest speaker and CEO of Myeloma Aust to be recognised with a Paul Harris Fellow (see images above & below). Along with his head office team and band of committed oncology nurses, the team are an amazing support to the 18,000 people around Australia that have been diagnosed with Myeloma - an incurable blood cancer.
One of the challenges for Multiple Myeloma is that it is a relatively uncommon cancer, and therefore has a low community awareness.
The ROMP Committee at Camberwell is continuing our strong and long standing association with Myeloma Aust to help build that awareness and community engagement, via involving regional Rotary Clubs to join the movement in supporting Myeloma patients with this outreach project.
Over the last year, we have been very active & have spoken to hundreds of Rotarians across regional Victoria. This was done via our committee doing guest speaking gigs at their Rotary Club weekly meetings, and also at their District Leadership forums right around the State - this has driven greater awareness and has enhanced more support to help Myeloma patients and their families in their local communities.
Myeloma Support groups for patients and families (provided both via video conferencing, and in person) are now in place across the 9 State jurisdictions of regional Victoria. These support groups are run by the Myeloma nurses - whilst that is a wonderful outcome, our work is far from finished, in many respects it has really just started.
We believe there is potential to take this Rotary initiative nationwide, because arguably there is more need in the larger States like NSW and QLD where bigger distances are a factor for communities affected by Myeloma
We intend to organize face to face visits to participating Victorian regional Rotary Clubs next over coming months in order to reinforce & celebrate their ROMP project involvement, and also to enjoy Rotary fellowship with our country colleagues.
Watch this space coming up soon in May this year - the National Myeloma Month - where we are working with Myeloma Australia to launch a community awareness marketing theme Australia wide. The National Myeloma Month will also include a special Rotary component which is exciting - and will be another opportunity to build community engagement.
Well done team!!!
