We recently held our Asia-Pacific Annual Conference in Brisbane. It was a great success as are all of our conferences but the most gratifying part of it for me was our launch of the Paul O’Byrne Cure for Cancer Foundation.
Paul passed away last year and will be sadly missed but the impact he has had on so many people (especally me and Kerry) will last forever. There are not too many days that go by when I don’t think of Paul and of the tragic loss of talent that cancer visits on the world.
So I’ll cut to the chase.
For the past year we’ve been thinking about how best we can celebrate the life of a man who, in his own humble, unassuming and hilarious manner, inspired so many of us to think outside the box and “just do it”. Paul was not a guy who approached things in a half-hearted manner so I’m sure he would approve of a small group like ours setting a target to raise $US1 million by 2015 for funding research into a cure of cancer– not the treatment of cancer but a CURE!
To get that started we had 87 people at our Annual Conference and from that small group we raised $10,280! That is an amazing result as far as I’m concerned. It’s such a joy to be associated with such generous, positive people.
You’ll hear more about this initiative in the future but for now I’m delighted and proud to say that we’ve kicked it off and we’re heading to $US1 million in Paul’s memory.