This weekend, a squad of vision impaired Aussie cricketers are heading to India to represent our country at the Blind T20 World Cup. Graeme Burrill on Hope Nights caught up with Sydneysider Oscar Stubbs about the tour and also hearing about his role with Blind Sports Australia. Listen to the full interview in the player above. The post Vision Impaired Aussie Cricketer Oscar Stubbs Off to Blind T20 World Cup appeared first on Hope 103.2 ..read more

When Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last year, Shabnam Safa watched on with more trepidation than most. Shabnam grew up in Pakistan as an Afghan refugee, before her family emigrated to Australia when she was a teenager. Life wasn’t easy for Shabnam but, as her story will prove, she is more than her hardships. A new Australian Shabnam grew up in a place called Hazara Town, close to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Her parents were teachers, and well respected among the community. However, Shabnam’s parents wanted more for their children. So, they emigrated to Australia as refugees when Shabn ..read more

Quitting your job and riding a motorbike 7200km across the Australian outback isn’t a challenge everyone is willing to take on. But for Carl Howard – along with 12 other riders – he did just that as part of The Great Australian Ride earlier this year, choosing to ride in support of The Children’s Hospital Foundation, in Queensland. “We started at Byron Bay and it rained for about halfway across the country but we had lots of adventures along the way… we took off on July 31 and got to Steep Point three and a half weeks later,” Mr Howard said. Through the rainy weather and several motorbike mal ..read more

Author Kaley Chu has been cripplingly shy for most of her life. But when it threatened to end her career, Kaley knew she needed to do something drastic. So, she set herself a challenge: have 100 lunches with strangers. A shy immigrant Kaley emigrated from Hong to Australia when she was 17 years old. Already shy and self-conscious, moving to a new country didn’t help. “I felt that I was a minority,” Kaley told Hope Drive. “All my friends were immigrants from Hong Kong. I was the only one in my group that went to a public school as well, so I was [severely] lacking in confidence.” A bold plan ..read more

Mirette Abraham is an incredible woman – a wife, a mother of two daughters, and an oncologist in training. She spends everyday walking with people through the hardest days of their lives. But Mirette also has some struggles of her own. She spoke to the Finding Hope podcast about buckling under the pressure of working in the hospital system – and dealing with intense postnatal depression after the birth of her first daughter. The ministry of medicine Mirette has wanted to be a doctor since she was a teenager. Despite having no medical professionals in her family, she always felt drawn to medi ..read more

? When filmmaker Jason van Genderen and wife Megan became full-time carers for his mum Hendrika, “Oma” – after she had developed Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia – the family decided to share the ups and downs of this new dynamic on their socials, and inadvertently made Oma an international online star.  Today is World Alzheimer’s Day – an opportunity to shine a light on a condition that affects almost half a million Australians – and Jason joined the Finding Hope podcast to share about Oma’s influence and the family’s hard but heartwarming adventures, made all the more challenging as a ..read more

For more than 40 years, the Make-A-Wish Foundation has helped fulfill the wishes of children with a critical illness, initially starting in the US and now impacting kids in nearly 50 countries globally. The story of its founder Frank Shankwitz is told in Wish Man, a movie taking us in to the backstory of the Arizona-based policeman and the young boy who inspired his philanthropy. Australian Andrew Steel (The Justice Lease, Red Rabbit Lodge) stars as Frank, a man who “came from very humble beginnings”. “His parents got divorced and he was in the middle of a terrible custody battle,” Andrew to ..read more

Trent Greentree is as true blue Aussie as they come. As a fifth-generation farmer from Freemans Reach, he spends his days growing cauliflower and cucumbers for Australian pickle company Three Threes. Trent loves being a farmer. It’s in his blood. But the last few years haven’t been easy. Floods wreaking havoc Just months ago, Trent’s family farm flooded for the third time in a year. The most recent flooding put the farm eight metres under water – leaving debris and destruction in its wake. The damage is almost inevitable, but lots of preparation goes into trying to save as much of the farm a ..read more

When 12-year-old Catie decided to support CBM’s annual Miracles Day, she wanted to go one step further than donating her pocket money. Catie decided that she would also wear an eye patch for a week, including to school, to gain an understanding of the challenges experienced by people living with vision impairments including those in some of the poorest parts of the world. “I’m wearing the eye patch to see what it’s like for people who are blind in one eye and the struggles they go through daily,” says Catie. “I’m going to be wearing it for seven days, wearing it all day.” Catie is hoping to r ..read more

It was only Chantal “Tilly” Hersel’s second shift as a medical emergency dispatcher for the Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) however she didn’t realise it would be her most memorable – and have her nominated for an award. In October last year, Ms Hersel took a frantic phone call from a lady whose 74-year-old partner had fallen off their house roof and gone into cardiac arrest. “I had to focus all my attention on giving CPR and how important giving CPR is in an emergency like this… fortunately I was able to reassure her that she could do it… and I was going to be there with her every step of ..read more