Baking For Brain Cancer began as an idea whilst having our family dinner one evening.

Life had turned upside down in April 2024, when Tonie, our beautiful Mum and wife, was diagnosed with glioblastoma (GBM), a highly aggressive brain cancer.

Compared with incredible progress in other forms of cancer, the survival of patients with GBM has not improved in 30 years. Shockingly, brain cancer kills more children than any other disease and more people under the age of 40 die from it than any other form of cancer in Australia.

Despite this, brain cancer researchers often find themselves struggling for funding, having to waste precious time applying for essential financial support instead of spending time in the lab.

With this in mind, we thought about how to rally the community to support brain cancer research. We truly believe we never would have made it this far without God's help. We also never want for another family to go through what we are going through.

We've operated a small family bakery for the last twenty years, so an idea came easily enough: let's start baking for brain cancer!

It's been our privilege to be part of our local community in Berwick over the years: supporting our customers, participating in school fundraisers, and running pie drives for the local footy club. We've seen the joy that great pies and pastries can bring – be it a meat pie or a vanilla slice – and reckon that people would get around their local bakery in support of a great cause.

We've teamed up with bakeries that we know here in Victoria, but our aim is to get as many bakeries across Australia involved as possible to support research for this dreadful disease. So, if you're a bakery owner and want to get involved, click here!

Our hope is that Baking for Brain Cancer, on May 31, can bring positive change for good in this world. We need your help to unite bakeries across Australia, and the communities around them, in the fight against brain cancer.

From Tonie: This pathway that has been before me the last number of months has been challenging in different ways. However, it has helped me realise the importance of trying to make a difference in other people’s lives. This fundraiser is one small way we are trying to help other families who have to endure what we are going through. I also want to share with you how important my faith has been in this difficult time. I have had an inner peace through trusting in God, and pray that you might know this peace, too. I would like to share this verse with you, from John 3:16 - “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.

~Many blessings from Phil, Tonie, Lauren and Nathan (Phil’s Pies and Pastries, Berwick, VIC)