ROTARIANS, sporting teams and clubs, families and friends around Australia will wear a hat on Friday, due largely to one man with a vision for a better future.
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Hat Day is an initiative of Australian Rotary Health, one of the largest not-for-profit funders of mental health research in the country, which had its beginnings in 1981 with Rotary Club of Mornington, Victoria, member Ian Scott.
Mr Scott heard a late-night radio interview with Professor Alan Williams, a prominent researcher and chief pathologist at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital, on sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
Mobilised into action by this broadcast, Mr Scott spoke to his fellow club members and founded the Australian Rotary Health Research Fund, with the aim of raising $2 million for SIDS research.
Thirty-four years and more than $33 million later, the foundation has directed funding annually to a number of causes, including aged, adolescent and family health issues, Bowelscan, Ross River fever, malaria, emergency care and, in recent years, mental health causes.
Hat Day is unique in that 100 per cent of money raised goes directly to research helping the one in five Australians affected by depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and many other illnesses.
You can help by registering your own Hat Day event at www.hatday.com.au and let everyone know they can help by making an online donation.
Don’t be at all surprised if you see some weird and wacky headwear on members of the Rotary Club of Tamworth Sunrise, their counterparts in the four other Tamworth Rotary clubs, or for that matter, Rotarians across the region.
The timing of Hat Day is even more fitting, as it’s World Mental Health Day.
The event has claimed two Guinness world records, for the most people wearing paper hats, and the most people wearing red hats – but texture or colour is entirely optional.
The wackier the hat, the better – as it attracts attention and creates awareness of a cause that affects so many Australian families.