Melbourne office worker Peter Jenssen took the ultimate aesthetic sacrifice for prostate cancer research recently when he auctioned his hefty beard to support the cause.
Peter sported a highly unusual look for one week with half his beard shaved and half fully grown, raising more than $1,000 for Australian Prostate Cancer and starting many important conversations in the process!
“I’ve had a long history with prostate cancer, including both grandfathers and my father (luckily for us all my father survived) suffering from this disease,” Peter said.
“This means that I’ve got a much higher risk of developing this disease myself which makes me mindful of research into the area and supportive of anything that I can do to further this.”
Peter had been growing his beard for 12 months for a friend’s wedding and with the nuptials complete, he decided to ensure the beard helped a cause of a different kind.
His workplace ESSSuper got behind him and he auctioned one half of the beard to the highest bidder and one half remained for a week in whichever style his colleagues voted on. This meant catching public transport, visiting shops and other activities throughout the week were done with only half a beard!
“It was 100% worth it. It was a bit of a challenge completing the week with only half a beard but I’ve never shied away from new experiences,” Peter said.
“It showed me that I’m not necessarily as brave as I think I am but also that doing something that’s a bit challenging definitely brings results. It’s made me feel that doing something this ridiculous again is likely to happen!
“The biggest take away was how amazingly charitable everyone is. I have had my faith in humanity and the human spirit reinforced in a way that I was not even slightly expecting.
“This includes a bunch of people shaking my hand on the street as they’d recognised the blue ribbon I was wearing and immediately correctly assumed that my condition (my face) was the result. It was immensely heartening.”
If you would like to learn more about fundraising for APC, call us on (08) 8243 1101 or click here.
