MESSAGE FROM VARIETY INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT
GRAHAME MAPP AM

Dear Variety Friends,

I was honoured to be elected as your new President at our 2007 International Convention in Palm Springs. We have been well served by a long line of dedicated Presidents and I salute them all for their unique contributions in making Variety what it is today. I bring a vision to further extend Variety’s global outreach to the countless millions of children in less-developed countries who desperately need our help.

Now in our 80th year, Variety the Children’s Charity is an international organisation with 50 Tents (chapters) operating in 4 major areas, the United States, Great Britain, Australia and Canada as well as in Israel, New Zealand, France, Jersey, Ireland, Barbados, Japan, Mexico, South Africa and Hong Kong. Collectively our 50 Tents raised a net amount of US$45million in our latest financial year which was used to bring support to tens of thousands of needy children in these communities.

Our diverse programs include providing wheelchairs and other mobility aids, specialised learning equipment, medical programs and hospital equipment, Sunshine Coaches, Liberty Swings (which enable wheelchair-bound children to experience the exhilaration of swinging free) and scholarships to empower children to reach for the stars, fulfill their abilities, and achieve their aspirations and dreams. Variety is essentially a volunteer-driven organization with thousands of volunteers working “at the coal face”. This ensures that our operating costs are low and a high proportion of every dollar raised goes directly to help the children.

Even more significantly though, Variety Children’s Lifeline programs are now reaching out to children in 52 other countries where the needs are greatest. Variety Children’s Lifeline was founded in 1982 in response to Nancy Reagan bringing 2 children from Korea in need of heart surgery. 25 years later it is now involved with an increasing number of medical missions which provide life-saving and life enhancing surgery for children in more and more developing countries, caring for over 3,000 children in the last 12 months alone.

Importantly, our Variety Children’s Lifeline medical missions also train local doctors and medical staff and leave behind technical equipment and drugs, thus providing a degree of sustainability. More recently we have further extended our reach by concluding arrangements with doctors and hospitals in Guatemala and New Delhi to provide surgery for children from surrounding areas and countries. It is hoped soon to conclude similar arrangements with hospitals in Kiev and Lima, Peru.

All of you who contribute to these amazing outcomes, through your time and medical expertise, provision of facilities or financial donations, should take a bow. Thousands of young lives have been saved or enhanced through the outstanding work by Variety’s global outreach program in its brief 25 year history. Unfortunately, there are ever-increasing numbers of needy children in impoverished areas of the World and we simply must find ways to extend our programs to help them. Our ability to do so is limited only by available funds.

I look forward to keeping you informed of our work and our achievements from time to time and I thank you for your continuing support of our great Charity.



Grahame Mapp AM
Sydney, Australia
International President



Brief Bio on Grahame Mapp AM

Grahame Mapp is one of Australia’s more successful businessmen of the past 3 decades, having developed one of the Country’s largest coal mining and exporting Corporations - Oakbridge Limited - from humble beginnings.

He was awarded the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day Honours in 1986 for service to the Coal Industry and the community.

Recently, Australia’s former Consul General in New York, Mr Kenneth C. Allen said of Grahame, “there is little doubt that Grahame’s record places him amongst the great Australian Industrialists in his time”.

Grahame was a Founder of the Variety Club of Australia in 1975. He was the Chief Barker for 4 years from 1979 to 1983 during which period he expanded Variety to all mainland capital cities of Australia and presided over a ten fold increase in net funds raised.

He returned as Chief Barker for another 3 years in 1992 and carried out a restructure of Variety in Australia which resulted in the formation of 7 separate Tents, reporting to a National Board. He became the inaugural Chairman of this Board in 1995.

Grahame is a well known philanthropist and he has also focused a lot of his time and energy on Variety and other community Organisations, over a long period. He retired in May this year as Chairman of Knox Grammar School, one of Australia’s leading boys’ schools, after 8 years in the role.

Grahame is Chairman and Proprietor of the Omnilab Media Group, Australia’s largest vertically-integrated media services organisation, a business he started 26 years ago and which now has operations in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland New Zealand. Oldest son Christopher is now Managing Director of the business and he has expanded it in recent years into the creation, production and distribution of television programming, children’s animated series and feature films.

Grahame has a passionate interest in breeding and racing thoroughbred horses from his historic Hobartville Stud near Sydney, the oldest horse stud in Australia. The Mapp racing silks are well known on the Australian turf, with a string of successes in recent years.

Grahame has 4 children and was widowed in 1995. In 2006, he re-married to Sue Fraser, the former Executive Director of Variety South Australia and current International Ambassador.