Festival Summary

The MY Mount Eliza Run & Fun Festival started in 2017 as a fun run, family fun day and fundraising event with money raised directed to the Snowdome Foundation to fund cutting- edge blood cancer research. Hosted on the Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, the Festival is now entering its fifth year which is planned for Sunday 14th March 2021. The Festival is run entirely by volunteers lead by Geoff Nyssen who was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014. Annually, the event has over 1000 participants, and has raised over $200k to date as well as an amazing amount of awareness for blood cancers.

In 2020, the Festival was due to be run in March, but due to COVID, was pivoted to a ‘virtual event’ in September. Moving into a virtual event proved to be extraordinarily successful, with a key benefit that people from all over Australia could contribute to the outcome. For the first time we saw 30-40 people participating in each of Sydney, Brisbane and the Gold Coast, as well as many people internationally. Currently in Australia, one person is diagnosed every 36minutes with a blood cancer. For this reason, in 2020, we asked all participants to put on their event T-shirt and incorporate the number 36 into their run, walk, hop, skip, cycle, pet walk or whatever they choose. The most important thing was to get active and have fun.

Some participant ideas included:

• Shoot 36 baskets (basketball / netball)
• Walk or run for 36 minutes, or for 3.6km
• Go for a walk and take 36 photos
• Importantly, we asked our participants to post a photo to the MY Mount Eliza Facebook
  page so that they could truly be part of our common team.

Festival 2021

For the 2021 event, we plan to run a ‘hybrid event’ whereby we will host the fun run in Mount Eliza, as well as giving people around Australia the opportunity to be involved in a virtual capacity. In select cities around Australia, the virtual event will comprise encouraging participants to meet at one location at an advertised time (e.g. Sydney Opera House Steps at 10am) where a short presentation will be held. All participants will then be invited to either 1) join a group walk along a planned route 2) complete their own activity as suggested above.

Local Area Champion – Role

To get best traction with participant registrations in any one location, we have found it best to have a Local Area Champion. In 2021, that person will work to generate interest, encourage participants to register and offer event day support to all local participants to enhance the participant experience. Local Area Champions will be fully supported by both Snowdome Foundation and the MY Mount Eliza Festival Committee to fulfil their role especially in the areas of event logistics, media support and messaging, graphics and branding.

For 2021, we are teaming with our Gold Sponsor Ritchies IGA to host a small event in Newcastle. Our Local Area Champion will work with the Festival Committee and team members from Newcastle Ritchies to undertake the following:

Oversee advertising of the event via social media, print media and radio into your local area. This will include:

• Placing event ads on key social media pages on a weekly basis, and more often as the event draws closer.
• Seek opportunities with local print media platforms to advertise the virtual event
• Generate local enthusiasm in order to increase awareness of the event and to encourage participants to register
• Collaborate with the team to plan Newcastle based event day activities
• On the day of the event, oversee event day logistics and activities

The key requirements for this volunteer role include, but are not be limited to:

• A passion for contributing to your community by supporting the delivery of the MY
  Mount Eliza Run & Fun Festival in Newcastle, raising funds for Snowdome Foundation
  to fund blood cancer research, and raise awareness of blood cancers.
• Good people liaison skills to enable you to engage well with Snowdome Foundation, the
  MY Mount Eliza Committee, sponsors and participants.
• Good writing skills so that you can craft / edit media releases for local print media.
• Proficient in the use of social media platforms including Facebook and Instagram.

The time required to fulfil this role is expected to range from 40-60 hours between December 2020 and March 2021.

Contact Geoff Nyssen on 0423 838 374 to discuss this exciting new role or submit your application below.