When you’re a single mum, like Sally, facing cancer on your own is scary enough…
“It broke me. But I had to be strong for my kids.” Today your compassionate gift means caring mums don’t need to worry about how to pay vital bills and feed their kids.
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28 February 2024
Stories
| HopeStreet, BaptistCare
It’s not easy work being a mum. Let alone a hardworking, single mum, like Sally*, raising two kids. All by herself.
Sally is a strong woman but even the strongest people need help sometimes. Especially when she’s going through the biggest health crisis of her life. So many like her, are already struggling with the cost of living crisis in Australia.
Your kindness helps support a mum like Sally through crisis… so her kids don’t miss out on food. Because when you’re facing cancer, you need to focus on fighting for your life... not where your children’s next meal is coming from.
Three years ago, Sally was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer.
“That was the scariest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. I had two surgeries and five weeks of radiation. Being a single mum, it was hard on my children.”
Sally’s treatment was so brutal it took every last ounce of energy she had. Yet she fought on. She struggled just to get her kids, James and Grace, up and dressed each morning and fed every night.
Getting through a full day at work exhausted her. Then Sally lost her job. Sadly, being sick cost Sally her livelihood.
At the scariest time in her life, she was left without a way to provide for her children. What a heartbreaking and frightening situation to find yourself in!
That’s when Sally turned to HopeStreet.
“I never thought I’d need to ask for help. Because I’ve always worked and provided. But to know that there’s someone around… to have that support or food assistance or even just someone to talk to… it’s amazing.”
This is how your kindness helps battlers like Sally…
Your compassionate $50 gift can mean help with family counselling and advice… to keep a single mum like Sally from falling into debt and poverty.
“You can sit down and have a chat with someone if you’ve got problems with bills. They’ll advocate for you and communicate with companies, because it can be so challenging – especially with housing or electricity and gas.”
Your compassionate $75 gift can mean crisis food vouchers to help a single mum like Sally put food on the table… even through sickness and job loss.
“Knowing that I could come and ask for help… got us through. If the kids were hungry, at least I knew, ‘Okay, I’ve got food through HopeStreet. Even if it was just noodles or a loaf of bread.”
Your compassionate $100 gift can provide transition to high school support… including costly school supplies and textbooks so children like Sally’s have everything they need to succeed at learning.
“To send my son off to high school was over $2,000, with school camp and uniforms and textbooks and everything else. To have the support of HopeStreet buying the writing books and pens and organising through the school to get a school uniform and funding to pay for school camp… that was a major help.”
But most of all, your compassionate gift today gives a single mum, like Sally, a caring community of people she can count on. Because hardship can happen to anyone at any time... and they don’t have to face them alone.
“Your gift shows there are caring people out in the world,” says Sally.
*Images are for illustration purposes.