A good idea, and plenty of goodwill from helpers, has turned into a lifesaving venture. Alexia Santamaria went to meet Pinkie, the Breast Cancer Foundation caravan.
If you’re reading this magazine and own a caravan, chances are you are reasonably familiar with the concept of towing. Getting everything loaded up, hitching up to the towbar and hitting the road for a holiday with friends or family is pretty much par for the course. But it turns out that in certain situations, towing a caravan can actually help save lives. Well it can when you’re towing Pinkie, Breast Cancer Foundation NZ’s caravan.
Pinkie’s life started in 2014 when she was custom built by Kevin Redshaw of Timeless Caravans in Palmerston North. It took a couple of months, and Kevin donated a lot of his time to the cause and enlisted many suppliers to donate products for free or cost price. “I built Pinkie because I had been building caravans to be towed by classic cars, and the Breast Cancer Foundation contacted me to see if there was a way I could help them create something that would be a drawcard for them,” says Kevin. “It’s such a cute little caravan, people aren’t intimidated by it, and they want to check it out, see what it’s all about.
“I couldn’t work for three months, but building Pinkie is the best thing I’ve ever done. I’ve had people call me over the years thanking me because their mum, or a family member, was saved because of Pinkie. It still brings tears to my eyes.” Several of those who helped have had family members affected by breast cancer, and jumped at the chance to support this amazing initiative.
Pinkie emerged in October 2014 in all her pink splendour ready to tour Aotearoa. She was actually built to mark the Foundation’s 20th anniversary, and the plan was that she would do a one-off tour of the country, taking in six months across both islands, including an Interislander ferry crossing, and then be used for special events, as and when needed. But this plan changed drastically after she returned from that first trip. “After talking to individuals and nurses about the interactions they had, it was overwhelmingly positive,” says Ah-Leen Rayner, chief executive of Breast Cancer Foundation NZ. “So we decided to make her a key part of our early detection programme. She would always have been used for something, but as it was so successful, we extended her to be a regular part of the programme and she’s now become fundamental to what we do in towns that don’t have easy access to breast health”. Since then, Pinkie has been around the whole of New Zealand five or six times, and is a regular at events like last September’s NZMCA Motorhome, Caravan & Leisure Show in Mystery Creek.
Before Pinkie hit the road on that first trip, there were some logistical hurdles to overcome. “The biggest challenge for us initially was working out how to actually move the caravan around the country. It had us stumped for quite a while – towing caravans is not a skillset that organisation hires for – and it was quite lacking within our team!” laughs Ah-Leen. Having someone in a full-time role towing Pinkie would have put operational costs up so they had to find another solution. That’s when someone came up with the genius idea of doing a call-out to the membership of NZMCA asking for help.
“It was amazing. We asked NZMCA and had a flood of offers from people who had had breast cancer in their family or just wanted to support the cause,” says Ah- Leen. “We are still so incredibly grateful for the team and all the work they do to this day. It was the fundamental component that pulled the caravan programme together and if it wasn’t for them we’d still be trying to solve that issue now! It takes an enormous amount of goodwill to make something like Pinkie’s tour happen – it’s people volunteering and NZMCA has been such a key component of all this – what they do actually does result in saving women’s lives.”
Pinkie’s impact is undeniable – as can be seen just by reading the books that can be found inside Pinkie, containing comments from those whom she has helped. The Foundation works closely with Breast Screen Aotearoa to focus on areas that have really low screening rates. “We actually had someone in In Dunedin tell our caravan nurses she’d never actually heard of a mammogram! It really shows how a medium like this does make a substantial change,” says Ah-Leen. And there are plenty of other stories too -–the fisherman on a trawler off the south coast who heard Pinkie was at Bluff and called his wife to tell her to go for a visit; a Māori health group in Hokianga who hold a pamper day when Pinkie comes to town (breast health out the front, cervical smears out the back and volunteers who come and provide massage and facials). Pinkie, and the nurses who staff her, are doing great work educating everyone on the importance of early detection in a very approachable, nonthreatening way. “Ordinarily you might think ‘why would go into somewhere and find out about breast health’ but a lolly pink caravan draws you in for what is actually a really serious conversation,” says Ah-Leen.
And the towers are only too pleased to help – in fact many do it year after year. Chris Matthews lives in Waiuku and has been towing Pinkie for around five years, mostly around South Auckland but has also gone as far as Whangarei and Hamilton. “I became involved when I found out that Pinkie needed to be shifted from Whangarei to Auckland. At the time I was visiting friends in Kerikeri.” says Chris. “Both my partner Joanna and my daughter have had breast cancer and we have seen some pretty worrying months while they have been having treatment. Fortunately, both are now clear. I believe that in towing Pinkie I can show some goodwill going forward, and if getting good information helps just one person to beat breast cancer then my time will be well spent.”
For more information on where Pinkie will pop up next, or to volunteer as a helper or tower, go to breastcancer foundation.org.nz/pinkcaravan
How You Can Help
Breast Cancer Foundation NZ is fundraising for a new pink campervan to allow its nurses to reach more isolated and rural areas of the country. To find out more, help and contribute to this life-saving work, visit breastcancerfoundation.org.nz
