Photos: Supplied.
Helen Rays, founder and president of Share the Kindness – a charity that provides dolls with removable hair to children to help them understand hair loss due to cancer treatment – has been recognised for her exceptional achievements and contributions to the community.
Helen has been named as a finalist in not one but two highly acclaimed awards – the AusMumpreneur Awards in the Women Changing the World category and the BEAM Awards in the Resilience Leadership and Making a Difference Community Awards.
In 2019 and aged 39, Helen was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her two daughters were four and six years old when she was having treatment.
Helen had heard about dolls with removable hair, but after searching, she couldn’t find anything, so she decided to find a way to make her own.
“During my treatment, I realised that if I wanted a doll like this, then perhaps they would be useful for other families, mums, dads, aunts, uncles, grandparents – or heartbreakingly, children themselves, who were facing the loss of hair due to cancer treatments,” explained Helen.
Share the Kindness now gifts dolls to cancer patients and their families through health and cancer support service partners across Queensland and has impacted the lives of hundreds of families.
For more information about Share the Kindness, visit www.sharethekindness.com.au.
