Michelle Thornton, who works at Grafton Community Health Aruma, didn’t have to look far for motivation to organise a palliative care fundraising event. “I witness first-hand the wonderful job that the palliative care nurses at Aruma do, in conjunction with the palliative care volunteers in the community,” she says. Michelle and her husband, Danny, are members of the Grafton Vintage Motor Vehicle Club and, during last November’s Jacaranda Festival, they and a band of volunteers, both car club members and non-members, organised a fundraiser in aid of Cranes Palliative Care Volunteer Service: ‘Sticks’ Movie and Camp Oven Dinner Night”. The club raised $1,300 at the event, held at the Southgate School hall, and last week donated the money to the volunteer palliative care service, to purchase new equipment. “This service cannot be maintained without the help of fundraising events such as the event we held during Jacaranda, and, as palliative care will touch most families at some time, it is a very worthy cause,” Michelle says. Senior manager for volunteer services at Cranes, Annette Rushby, says 100 per cent of donations to the service go back into the community by assisting volunteers to “make visits where the family has a life-limiting illness”, or by purchasing new equipment. “We are only partly funded, and without these types of donations there would be negative impacts on the services we provide; we really appreciate the work the volunteers do.”