What does charity really mean?
By Zoe Waters, Executive Director Barwon Health Foundation
Last Saturday marked the United Nations International Day of Charity.
It’s a day that challenges us to consider the power of charity in creating solidarity - the idea that giving collective action can bring people together and strengthen communities.
In just one year, Australians gave almost $15 billion in donations and bequests to registered charities and engaged almost four million volunteers across the country.
It got me thinking about a word we use a lot at the Barwon Health Foundation.
Charity. It’s a familiar word. We use it all the time to describe organisations, donations, fundraisers and acts of generosity. But what does it actually look like? And more importantly, what does it really mean?
It is a family foundation making a transformational philanthropic gift that will help create a new Hybrid Operating Theatre for our region, enhancing surgical capability closer to home.
It is the many people joining our Circle of Care and backing a once-in-a-generation collective giving opportunity to help support the healthcare provided by Barwon Health for local women, children and families.
This is charity.
But it can also be much quieter, too.
Walk into the Wellness Lounge at Barwon Health’s Andrew Love Cancer Centre and you’ll find a space away from the clinical environment.
There are wellbeing programs including art and exercise therapy, a wig library and a place to sit in a massage chair, have a cup of tea or talk to someone who listens.
Community generosity helps make these important supports possible.
They may not be the largest investments we make. They may not make headlines. But, for someone in the middle of treatment or a hospital stay, something that makes an incredibly difficult day just a little easier can mean everything.
This is charity too.
Philanthropic support for research is providing vital seed funding - helping bridge the gap between an idea and proof of concept, and giving researchers the opportunity to test theories, gather preliminary data and explore what might be possible.
The impact of that investment may not be known for years. But perhaps, one day, an idea given the chance to be explored might lead to a better way of caring for people, a new treatment, an important medical advancement or, who knows, perhaps even a cure.
And some of the most visible acts of charity don’t involve making a donation at all.
A few weeks ago, volunteers spent their Saturday cooking sausages at Bunnings across the region to raise money for the Barwon Women’s and Children’s Appeal. At the Cats' final home game, another group helped us hand out Run4Geelong merchandise and flyers, encouraging people to get involved.
These aren't grand gestures. But collectively, they can have grand impact.
We see the same thing in schools that hold fundraisers, businesses that rally their staff, families who leave gifts in their Wills and thousands of people who pull on a red shirt for Run4Geelong.
Different people. Different contributions. Different reasons for giving.
But underneath them all is something remarkably simple.
The belief that someone else's future matters.
International Day of Charity may have been marked on Saturday, but perhaps its greatest value is reminding us that charity was never really about a single day - or even about money.
It is choosing to contribute what you can, in a way you can - money, time, an idea, a connection or a helping hand - and trusting that alongside the contributions of others, it can become something far greater.
Most individual acts of charity won't change the world on their own.
But communities aren't built by one extraordinary act.
They are built by millions of ordinary acts of generosity, quietly accumulating over time.
Here at the Barwon Health Foundation, we are fortunate enough to see what happens when they do.
And sometimes, what they become is truly extraordinary.
