What is the Question – August

JANET Jones, a former Ballarat resident, was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in The Queen’s Birthday Honours List.

Dr Rimas Liubinas said of her, “Janet has been a friend for 30 years. Her strength and determination sets her apart from most people. In a world where people are consumers or providers, she is a provider who always seems to care for others.”

 

What is your name?

Janet Jones

 

What is your occupation?

Until 2018, I worked at the Ballarat Specialist School as a careers, transition and work experience co-ordinator. I resigned when my husband and I moved to Anglesea.

 

What brought you to Ballarat?

In 1987 I married my husband, Peter. He’s a Ballarat boy.

 

For what were you awarded the OAM?

For services to life saving, and the community.

 

What form did your commitment take?

I’ve worked and volunteered in Special Education for 17 years; in childcare supporting vulnerable youth; and I ran a mentoring programme called Kids Hope Australia, which involved training mentors, and mentoring students who were experiencing learning difficulties and needed additional support; and the Ballarat Specialist School in various roles, including helping students to transition into work experience and jobs.

 

What is the Starfish Nippers programme which you co-founded with Naomi Symington?

It provides kids and young adults with disabilities, an opportunity to learn water skills and beach safety. We started at the Anglesea Surf Life Saving  Club, now it’s across Australia, and even overseas.

What has inspired you throughout your life and career?

 

My husband, Peter, my children, and friends who have supported me with their love through the ups-and-downs of my challenges with cancer, and along the way with my community work.

In my career, it has been John Burt, the former principal of the Ballarat Specialist School.

 

What inspired you to help raise funds for cancer research?

After my first bout of cancer – 32 years ago, I decided I wanted to do something for others in the same situation – because at the time I thought I was cured! Through family, I met Ballarat’s Gail Elsey who lost her young daughter, Fiona, to a tumour. She was fundraising for research into childhood cancers. Back then it was the Cancer in Kids Association. Now it’s the Fiona Elsey Cancer Research Institute.

 

What the result of that meeting?

In the 1990s, I became involved in funding one researcher under the supervision of Professor George Kannourakis, a children’s oncologist and, as it happens, mine, too.

 

And what happened last summer?

I established the 12-kilimetre Lighthouse Classic; a community project to raise funds for a research program to try and shed new light on what causes cancer and how it can be treated more effectively.

 

What is the Lighthouse Classic?

It’s a fundraiser. The idea was to touch a lighthouse, or a monument, in honour of someone who had been touched by cancer. In total, more than 780 people completed the 12 km course during the month of January.

Thanks to the amazing generosity of our supporters, it raised more than $70,000 – enough to fund a cancer research scientist in Ballarat until the end of 2021; however, the Lighthouse Classic was not just about my cancer. It’s about trying to raise funds so we can find out why people get cancer; how we can stop it; and how we can improve the treatment.

The research aims to help a broad range of patients with leukemia, bowel, ovarian, breast, renal, lung, melanoma and pancreatic, as well as haematological cancers.

 

What have you learned from your bouts with cancer? 

We tend to think it is either hereditary, or the result of an unhealthy lifestyle.   In my situation – and for so many others – that’s not the case at all.

 

What keeps you so positive?

Sport and keeping fit. It’s one of my passion. It definitely helps our mental and physical well-being and can give a great start to your day.

With our Ballarat running group – the Tann Clan – we trained for marathons and Iron Man competitions and formed fantastic friendships.

Also, I was lucky enough to be involved as a board member of the Ballarat Sports Foundation which provides sporting scholarships to up-and-coming athletes. Ballarat is home for lots of talented athletes, and it was great to be involved in an organisation which helps to nurture their dream.

 

And what is your passion?

Identifying why, and what causes some human cells to become cancerous.  I’ve managed to conquer two different cancers, on two separate occasions, and now I’m fighting it, again!