Dear Old Barker Association Member

My name is Robyn Leonard and I am an old Barker parent. After the death of my daughter, Lucinda (95) from a brain cancer, I established a brain cancer research consortium, Brain Cancer Biobanking Australia (BCBA), to help facilitate better outcomes for people diagnosed with this devastating disease. I am writing to you today to provide advance notice of a 2 day fundraising bike ride event in March 2018. Starting from Barker College and finishing at Calais Estate Winery in the Hunter Valley, the ride is being organised in conjunction with the Tour de Cure group to raise funds for BCBA.

It will be a big couple of days ending with a family fun day at Calais Estate Winery (owned by another old Barker Family) and being organised by Fun Events. If you are interested there will be a number of ways you can get involved;

• Become a sponsor
• Become a rider
• Become a volunteer
• Join in the Family Fun day

As to why we are doing this? Brain cancer kills more children and adults under 40 than any other cancer, yet remains one of the most under-researched of all the cancer groups. Achieving real breakthroughs in the current era of genomic research requires access to an unprecedented amount of high quality tissue and associated data.

BCBA - a consortium of Australia’s leading paediatric and adult brain cancer clinicians and researchers - have undertaken the enormous task of drawing together the fragmented and disparate collections of brain tumour tissue stored in biobanks across the country. BCBA is now the virtual hub for this network of biobanks and home to Australia’s first centralised registry of brain tumour tissue, enabling collaboration to accelerate brain cancer research both locally and internationally.

Following the holiday break we will be circulating flyers which will provide more detailed information for both potential sponsors and riders, but in the meantime if you feel this is something you, your company or someone in your network might be willing to sponsor I would love to hear from you, so please get in contact with me directly: M 0404 290 139 E robynleonard@bigpond.com

Warmest regards                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

 Robyn Leonard