RALLYING support and funds for a charity has become a much greater challenge in the 30 years since Susie O'Neill founded the KIDS Foundation.
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Dr O'Neill said the fact the KIDS Foundation is "the strongest it's ever been" was, in itself, her charity's great strength to keep growing and developing programs to both look after child survivors of traumatic injury and to prevent childhood injury.
There are big plans ahead for the foundation's 30th year and Dr O'Neill said to be awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia was an exciting way, personally and for the foundation, to launch the year. Dr O'Neill said the honour gave credit to all the KIDS Foundation's work.
"The thing I love most about my job is I get to really help people because we can and we do change lives," Dr O'Neill said. "I know we have definitely saved people's lives and are making dreams come true.
"I'm really looking forward to this year."
Dr O'Neill is a qualified pre-school and primary school teacher, with a PhD in education.
It was on an early teaching placement in the 1980s that Dr O'Neill met a girl who had cigarette burns on her hands. This led to Dr O'Neill choosing to devote her studies and career to children at risk.
Not long after this, Dr O'Neill met a 12-year-old boy recovering from injury in a ward with elderly men at the Queen Elizabeth Centre because, at the time, Australia had no rehabilitation centres for children.
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In 2000, KIDS Foundation opened its first child rehabilitation unit Pete's Place at the QE.
Dr O'Neill said through the "unimaginable tragedies" of others, she found her purpose.
The KIDS Foundation will mark its 30th year with five recovery camps, a new animated e-safety program to roll out to thousands of children across Australia and a new mental health and well-being initiative for child trauma survivors to help them voice autonomy for their bodies.
Dr O'Neill also plans to re-launch her book When Bad Things Happen...Good Things Can Grow, which she launched in late 2021 with Thai Cave rescuer Richard Harris.
Early next month a group representing KIDS Foundation will be flown to a mystery international location in filming for television show Adventure All Stars, a show sending what it bills as a socially conscious cast to explore incredible destinations. The program will screen later in the year on 7plus.
And this is just a taste of the KIDS Foundation calendar.
Recovery camps are particularly special to Dr O'Neill, such as the long-time Moreton Island camp held at a wild dolphin resort. Here, one of the dolphin calves was named Phoenix in honour of the foundation.
The Moreton Island camp was also where young burns survivor Dalton had bonded with a young dolphin, approved by the dolphin's parents as a friend. Both Dalton and the dolphin died, in separate incidents, in the Toowoomba floods of 2010.
Dr O'Neill said the camp was simply a special place.
Stories are important to Dr O'Neill, becoming part of the story for both herself and the foundation.
This year, one young boy's dream will finally be realised in becoming a movie actor. The boy had been the only one of a small group of burns survivors whose dream on a vision board had not come true. After a couple of chance meetings and interest in his story, Dr O'Neill managed to find him a role in a big budget movie being filmed in Australia.
In the "up-and-down" charity world, Dr O'Neill said stories such as the young actor were true career highlights in empowering people to realise what could be possible.
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