WALK WITH WOMEN
Walk With Women, the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation’s (OCRF) original fundraising walk event, was the brainchild of OCRF Ambassador and friend, Helen Powell.
From 2024, with an altered course, this special walk will continue to honour Helen’s legacy as it steps into the Mother’s Day Classic.
"Get involved if you can. How you can. It's all for a good cause. And be sure to have fun – compulsory fun."
Helen ‘Foxy’ Powell, Walk With Women Founder
Helen began the walk in 2016 following her own diagnosis with ovarian cancer. In that first year, she and just six close friends walked a 30km-length course along the picturesque Mornington Peninsula, stretching from Safety Beach Sailing Club to Hotel Sorrento.
Known in its first six years as the Wonder Woman Walk, Helen’s walk was renamed Walk With Women upon becoming an official event of the OCRF in 2022.
Helen was determined to do whatever she could to increase awareness of ovarian cancer; its symptoms, and the need for an early detection test, better treatments and funding. To this end, she was a force to be reckoned with, as she got to work encouraging women and men from across Australia and overseas to get involved raising awareness and funds through walking with, and for, the women and girls in their lives.
Devastatingly, Helen passed away in 2020 from ovarian cancer. Her wish was for the walk to continue and to grow. In 2024, as the Walk With Women falls under the renowned national fundraising event, the Mother’s Day Classic, Helen’s dream of a national event supporting women’s health, including ovarian cancer, is realised.
Helen Powell
Helen was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2013 at the age of 41. After just 3 weeks of symptoms (which typically mimicked common female complaints) – belly bloating, tiredness and loss of appetite – she was told that she had Stage 3C Ovarian Cancer, which is an end-stage diagnosis. Helen defied the odds and survived for almost seven years following her diagnosis.
A beloved wife and mother of four gorgeous boys, a sister, a daughter, a niece, and a dear friend to many, Helen ran the walk for the next three years until her passing from the disease on Valentine's Day, 2020.
She lived life with a vigour, playfulness, caring, joy and grace that inspired, guided and comforted. And she was not just passionate but driven to raise awareness and funding for the OCRF, in support of it finding a reliable early detection test and improved treatments.
WHY WE WALK: Raising funds for life saving research.
From 2016 to 2023, the Wonder Woman Walk / Walk With Women was an annual not-for-profit charity event dedicated to raising awareness and funding in support of OCRF and its quest to find a reliable early detection test and improved treatments to offer better quality of life and to extend life for women living with ovarian cancer.
Having an early detection test for ovarian cancer is vital because:
The symptoms of ovarian cancer are so vague. Symptoms usually are not felt until the cancer is in the later stages and may have spread.
For many women, the only signs are cramps, bloating, feeling full or needing to urinate more often - all symptoms which mimic common female complaints.
As a consequence, 70% of women are not diagnosed until they are in the advanced stages of the disease, and only 29% survive beyond five years.
It is also a core focus of the OCRF to ensure more effective, targeted treatments are developed for ovarian cancer. Treatments have hardly changed in 30 years and the standard chemotherapy often has a significant impact on the quality of life of ovarian cancer patients.
From 2024, as the Walk With Women becomes hosted as part of the Mother’s Day Classic. The funds it raises will support not only ovarian cancer research, but breast cancer research too.
WHY WE WALK: Raising awareness
It was also profoundly important to Helen that her charity walk help raise awareness. This is why Walk With Women has moved to sit within the Mother’s Day Classic – where national awareness of the importance of women’s health, and specifically breast and ovarian cancer, are fiercely promoted.
Helen wanted women to be aware that ovarian cancer can affect women and girls of all ages, to be vigilant about their health and to know the symptoms of ovarian cancer, particularly as they are so vague and typically mimic common female complaints. She wanted women to make sure they asked their medical professional questions if they were concerned about their health - even if it were the case of something just not feeling right - and persisting until they got an answer they were satisfied with.
Helen also wanted women to be aware that a Pap Test is an early detection test for cervical cancer, not ovarian cancer, and that survival rates for ovarian cancer would not change dramatically until an early detection test was found
