Students and teachers at St Andrew’s Anglican College bravely shaved, cut or waxed their hair during the World’s Greatest Shave, raising an incredible $20,453 for the Leukemia Foundation.
The team, comprising of Felicity Greenbank, Bree Loli, Jack Bowen, Huxton Smith, Luke Harding, Chelsea Phillips, Tatum Attias, Alex Eldridge, Charlie Hallett, Zahlia Terlich and Evony Elley, worked together to raise the phenomenal amount of cash, while the rest of the student body showed their support by sporting their own crazy hair.
Team captain, Felicity Greenbank, a teacher at St Andrew’s said she participated in honour of her father, Mal.
“Dad was diagnosed with the most aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November 2016,” Felicity said.
“Over the next nine months, he had six cycles of chemotherapy. His hair began falling out in clumps after the first cycle which came as quite a shock. Dad asked me to shave it off and this was a really emotional part of our journey because he always had a lot of hair. He even had a ‘fro when he met Mum, so losing his hair was like losing part of his identity.”
Though now in remission, Felicity says Mal is still rebuilding his strength after a stem cell transplant.
“It took much more recovery than we could have ever anticipated. The more we can help other families who are going through this horrendous time, the better.”
On Thursday, Mal again shaved his head -voluntarily this time – after raising almost $3000 for Blood Cancer research.
“I am so incredibly proud of my dad, and I couldn’t let him go through it alone, so I cut off most of my hair too,” Felicity said.
Another teacher who participated is Bree Loli who teamed up with her husband Zorro to shave their heads.
“We believe if you can help, you should,” Bree said.
“This is something we can do quite easily; it’s just a haircut, and we can raise a substantial amount of money doing it.”
Zorro lost his father Laufika to cancer just a little over a year ago, so Bree says raising money for any type of cancer research feels “of great personal value” to them.
“Originally, I was participating in World’s greatest shave as an individual, but Zorro is such a great team player he decided to shave his head as well. He has such great hair – so we thought we could increase our fundraising capacity if he was to face the clippers. I was also inspired by the students at St Andrews who are doing it and I thought it would be great to have a female teacher show support by also shaving their head, so I signed up.”
Year 12 student Luke Harding teamed up with his best friend Jack Bowen to wax their legs and said the experience was “surprisingly less painful” than he imagined it would be.
“When the call came out for participants, I thought it would be a selfless thing to do so I signed up,” Luke said. “I didn’t want to shave my head but I thought, ‘I’ll happily give up my leg hair.’”
While Luke said he would do it again “for charity,” he also admits he has newfound appreciation for those who regularly wax in the name of beauty.
“Jack and I got the first wax strip done at the same time so neither of us would chicken out.”
Luke and Jack sold the opportunity to buyers paying $5 each to rip the hair off their legs with wax strips.
A special mention must be made of teacher Mitch Sokolowski who had his legs waxed after being voted in by students of the house that donated the most money. He put on a brave face despite what appeared to be a not-so-pleasant wax job – all for a good cause.
Felicity said she is “absolutely humbled” by the generosity of sponsors. “To raise more than $20,000 is an incredible achievement. I am so proud of everyone on the St Andrew’s team but also all the friends and family of our community for getting behind such an important cause.”
