By Luke Voogt
Donors have raised more than $20,000 in just two weeks for a Geelong charity in honour of late Collingwood football legend Lou Richards.
Belmont’s Ange Liston-McCaughly said the Richards family had “catapulted“ Type 1 Foundation into the “national spotlight” by urging people to donate instead of sending flowers.
“We’ve had some really big donations come in – it’s been massive to be on TV.”
Ange’s daughter Lila, 13, has Type 1 diabetes and sees the same paediatrician as Richards’ great-grandson Jack.
“Lucy (Jack’s mother) and I will probably end up working quite closely,” she said.
Geelong football great and TV personality Sam Newman raised $10,000 of the figure when he nailed a bullseye in a Footy Show tribute to Lou’s Handball.
Ange missed the segment but said Richards’ family sent her a video of them watching it. “They were all going crazy,” she said.
She went to the funeral of the Collingwood legend where she heard of his generosity. She said the Type 1 Foundation would help carry on his legacy.
“He was a huge charity man,” she said.
Cats supporters Ange and Lila collected money at the MCG when Collingwood faced Hawthorn, which included a tribute to Richards.
“We had to barrack for them which was a bit weird,” she said. “My husband barracks for Hawthorn, so it’s kind of funny.”
In December 2013, Lila fell severely ill on a family holiday in Queensland.
She had been sick a few months before but doctors did not diagnose her condition until she ended up in a Gold Coast Hospital.
“They said she had diabetes and was an hour (away from) falling into a coma,” Ange said.
“It was a very scary time. When Lila was diagnosed, there was no support.”
So in June 2015, the mother-of-four started the Type 1 Foundation to ensure “no one would end up in our position”.
In 2016 she ran in 10 marathons, in every state in Australia, to get the foundation off the ground.
“There’s a lot of money being put in to research in care,” she said.
“But there are a lot of people living with Type 1 diabetes who need support – (the foundation has) just grown from there.”
Lila has an expensive insulin pump connected to her stomach, counts carbs in everything she eats and checks her blood sugar many times daily.
Her family also checks on her and worries about long-term complications like blindness, kidney disease and heart failure.
“Type 1 diabetes is very much a family disease,” Ange said.
Ange planned to spend a large portion of the donations on an online module to educate teachers on diabetes.
She said the module would cost $10,000 to introduce to Victoria alone.
“We want to make that a national thing, so every teacher knows how to treat a child with diabetes.”
