The Allan Frenkel Nursing Scholarship is now a perpetual scholarship at the University of Sydney. Here’s the story of how 25 years of community support made it happen.
The Allan Frenkel Nursing Scholarship, 25 years in the making
Allan Frenkel was 17 when he was diagnosed with leukaemia. His family’s world changed overnight. Allan faced it the way everyone who knew him would’ve expected. He was the cheeky one, the one who made people laugh without trying, the one who walked into a room and changed the energy in it. Even during treatment, he wanted the people around him to feel good.
Allan received a stem cell transplant soon after his diagnosis. His family surrounded him, his nurses cared for him, and his friends stayed close. He didn’t make it. He was just 18 years old.
Allan with his brothers and Steve Waugh, who visited to lift his spirits during treatment
His mum and dad, Marisa and Eduardo, and brothers Pablo and Ian set up the Allan Frenkel Foundation in his memory. Every year for the past 25 years, they’ve held a gala dinner to raise money and help families going through the same thing. What started as a way to keep Allan’s name alive became something much bigger. That something became the Allan Frenkel Nursing Scholarship.
From gala dinners and City2Surf to a perpetual scholarship
When the team at TLR connected with Allan’s family, the bond was immediate. The family had never forgotten the nurses who cared for Allan during his treatment, and TLR already supported nurses through the Trace Richey Nursing Scholarship. Both sides understood what it means to turn loss into something that lasts.
A nursing scholarship made sense straight away. The Allan Frenkel Foundation had been raising funds through their gala dinner for years. When TLR partnered with the foundation, it directed a portion of its City2Surf fundraising over the past three years toward the scholarship, alongside its core work of growing the stem cell donor registry. Others donated privately, and the total kept climbing.
At the 25th anniversary gala dinner, they hit $190,000. That’s the number that makes the Allan Frenkel Nursing Scholarship perpetual at the University of Sydney. It doesn’t run out. It’ll support a nurse completing the Master of Cancer and Haematology Nursing every second year, alternating with the Trace Richey Nursing Scholarship. Two names. Two scholarships. Nurses coming through every year.
Neil and Marisa celebrating the moment the Allan Frenkel Nursing Scholarship became permanent
Hitting that target at the 25th anniversary is the kind of moment Allan would’ve appreciated. Twenty five years of his family showing up, bringing people together, and turning grief into something useful. It’s extraordinary, and it didn’t happen by accident.
Why this matters for cancer nursing
Nurses are the people patients see more than anyone during treatment. They’re the ones explaining what’s happening when families feel lost, sitting with patients through long hours in isolation, and keeping things calm on days that feel anything but. Cancer nurses with postgraduate training go further again. They carry specialist skills into every ward they work in, and the patients they care for feel the difference.
The catch is that postgraduate study costs money. Plenty of nurses want to specialise but can’t swing the fees on top of everything else. That’s exactly what this scholarship fixes. It lets nurses get the training without carrying the cost alone.
Twenty five years of gala dinners, three years of City2Surf teams, and a lot of people who heard Allan’s story and wanted to help. That’s how you build a scholarship that’ll put nurses through advanced cancer and haematology training for as long as the University of Sydney exists.
Two scholarships, and now a third
TLR now has two perpetual nursing scholarships at the University of Sydney. The Trace Richey Nursing Scholarship and the Allan Frenkel Nursing Scholarship both support nurses completing the Master of Cancer and Haematology Nursing. They alternate each year, which means a new specialist cancer nurse comes through the programme every twelve months.
And now there’s a third. TLR has just awarded its first scholarship for a haematology nurse to complete the Master of Nursing (Nurse Practitioner) at the University of Sydney. A Nurse Practitioner in haematology can diagnose conditions, prescribe medications, order tests, and lead complex patient care independently. It’s the next step up from specialist nursing, and it means more nurses with the authority to make clinical decisions at the bedside rather than waiting for someone else to sign off.
For TLR, it’s a chance to do more of what already works. The two perpetual scholarships produce specialist cancer nurses. The NP scholarship takes experienced haematology nurses further again. More specialist nurses trained, more patients getting better care, more of Allan’s and Trace’s legacies at work in hospitals across Australia.
The people who made this happen
All three scholarships exist because families and communities chose to do something with their loss.
TLR is grateful to everyone who got this here. To Marisa, Eduardo, Pablo, Ian, and the Frenkel family for 25 years of showing up. To every person who came to a gala dinner, pulled on a City2Surf jersey, or made a quiet donation. This scholarship exists because of you.
And to the nurses who show up every day for their patients, thank you. TLR exists in large part because of what you do. These scholarships are our way of making sure more nurses get the training they deserve, so more patients get the care they need.
Support TLR’s nursing scholarships
To learn more about TLR’s nursing scholarships and the people behind them, visit TLR’s nursing scholarships page.
If you’d like to support future nurses, you can make a donation here.