This is an Australian founded idea, taken to the world. We are seeking to raise $300,000 to build a Global Cancer Support Platform. The funding program has three very deliberate and complementary fundraising pillars:

This will see The Other Chair fully developed, staffed and operational from day one, with the $300,000 in initial seed funding.

Importantly, the donations shown on this GoFundMe represent the community crowdfunding pillar only, as just one part of our broader $300,000 seed-funding campaign.

Every contribution, from each fundraising pillar, brings us closer to establishing this vital service and creating a substantial resource for the people who sit beside a woman through cancer.

But our ambition goes much further, and our dreams are much bigger.

Over the next five years, we aim to secure more than $1 million to develop The Other Chair into a world-leading, perpetually free, global support platform, so that wherever cancer takes a woman, the person sitting beside her has somewhere to turn.

Our longer-term vision is to also establish a sister platform for the women sitting beside a man, through his cancer diagnosis too.

Whether it’s $20, $50 or $100, your contribution helps us build it.

When a woman is diagnosed with cancer, the world quite rightly turns toward her. Appointments multiply. Treatment begins. Family and friends gather close. Everything shifts toward helping her heal, endure and survive.

But beside her sits someone else.

Someone who loves her desperately. Someone trying to stay strong because she needs them to be. Someone carrying fear, uncertainty and helplessness they may not know how to talk about.

I know that chair because I have sat in it.

When my wife, Leah, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022, I thought I understood what was required of me.

Be strong. Be steady. Be positive.

Whatever I was feeling, I believed my job was to carry it quietly so she didn't have to carry that too.

Because of COVID restrictions, I wasn't allowed to sit beside Leah during chemotherapy. I would drive her to hospital, watch her walk through those doors alone, and then sit in the car.

Sometimes I cried.

Then I would compose myself, go back to work, and try to make life feel as normal as possible. That became my way of coping.

What I didn't understand was that all the fear I was pushing down had nowhere to go.

I searched for support. I joined breast cancer groups and was welcomed with enormous kindness, but I was often the only man there.

I kept wondering, where are the other men going through this ?

Where does the husband go when he is terrified his wife might die, but doesn't want to frighten her by saying it ?

Who helps the father remain steady for his children ?

Who teaches us how to support the woman we love when we don't know what to say, what to do, or how to cope ourselves ?

Then, in 2024, Leah's cancer returned.

I went back to what I knew. I organised and I problem-solved.

I tried to protect her. I convinced myself that if I could control everything around the cancer, somehow I could control what it was doing to us. But cancer doesn't work that way.

Eventually, the fear and anxiety I had been carrying caught up with me. I needed professional help. Therapy and medication became part of my own journey.

And through that experience I learned something that changed the way I saw cancer completely.

When the person beside her begins to fall apart, she feels it too.

That was the beginning of The Other Chair.

I started asking why there wasn't something built specifically for the people sitting beside women with cancer, particularly men who may struggle to ask for help or even find the words to explain what they are feeling.

Something practical. Private. Accessible.

A place to learn how to support her, communicate with children and family, navigate intimacy and fear, understand treatment, look after yourself, and simply hear from others who have sat in that same chair.

And we want to keep all of it free.

Your donation doesn't simply help us build a website, it creates a community.

No subscription. No paywall. No postcode determining whether support is.

Our main pillars will be:

The Other Chair Conversations

Your donation will help us bring together leading psychologists, cancer specialists, relationship experts, researchers and other professionals from around the world, alongside the real human stories of men and families who have lived this journey.

These professionally produced conversations will explore the questions, fears and pressures that rarely get spoken about, how to support her, how to cope yourself, how cancer changes relationships, intimacy, family, work and life, and how to keep standing when the journey becomes overwhelming.

Every conversation will be available free, wherever in the world someone needs it.

The 20 Minute Sit

Sometimes a man doesn't have an hour. He may have twenty minutes in the car, walking the dog, sitting outside a hospital or lying awake when everyone else is asleep.

Your donation will help us build a growing global audio library of short, focused conversations that turn expert knowledge and lived experience into something immediately useful.

Fear. Burnout. Children. Relationships. Treatment. Work. Intimacy. The uncertainty of what comes next.

Twenty minutes. One subject. Something useful to take with you.

Field Guide Reads

Cancer can suddenly put someone into situations they have never faced before — and leave them wondering what they are supposed to do next.

Your donation will help us create a growing library of practical, downloadable Field Guides informed by specialists, professional expertise and lived experience.

From preparing for appointments and understanding treatment, to supporting her through side effects, communicating with children, navigating intimacy and protecting your own wellbeing, these guides are designed to provide calm, practical direction when it is needed most.

Free to download. Free to keep. Free to return to whenever you need it.

LiveWell

Supporting someone you love through cancer can take an enormous physical and emotional toll.

Your donation will help us work with experts in stress, sleep, movement, meditation, breathwork and nervous-system regulation to create practical tools that help the person in the other chair remain steady too.

Not because his wellbeing matters more than hers — but because looking after the person she may be depending upon is another way of looking after her.

LiveWell will help turn wellbeing from something men know they should do into something practical they can actually use.

James — The Other Chair Companion

Sometimes the hardest question is the one you don't want to ask another person.

Your donation will help us develop and grow James, our private AI support companion, designed to be available 24 hours a day for the man who simply needs somewhere to start.

At 2am. From a hospital corridor. After difficult news. Or during the quiet drive home.

James will provide a judgment-free place to ask a question, understand what you may be feeling, find practical resources and, where appropriate, encourage connection with qualified professional support.

Our goal is simple: wherever he is in the world, whenever he arrives, he should never have to feel that there is nowhere to turn.

The Other Chair is being created for the husband sitting silently in a hospital room.

For the father trying to keep his family together. For the son supporting his mother. For the friend who desperately wants to help but doesn't know how.

I cannot change what happened to Leah and I.

But I can try to make sure that what I learned from our experience becomes something that helps the next person sitting in that chair.

Because supporting the person beside her isn't taking the focus away from the woman with cancer.

It's another way of supporting her.

That's why I'm asking for your help to build The Other Chair. Together we can build a global platform that will last for generations.

So that one day, when someone hears the words “she has cancer,” they don't have to wonder where they are supposed to turn.

They will know there is a chair waiting for them too.

For more information, read our full Information Memorandum at : The Other Chair - Website

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