Merewether High students have raised over $100,000 for the World's Greatest Shave

Led by prefects and captains, the school went above and beyond their $80,000 goal as official donations ticked over $100,000 just before noon Thursday.

Adding to the more than $8000 raised through their Raffle for a Remedy, Merewether High is on track to donate the most money of any school in Australia to the Leukaemia Foundation this year.

Yolande Atkinson was the top student fundraiser at the school, donating more than $5600 to the cause. Yolande said she braved the clippers to support her family members who were diagnosed with blood cancer in 2019.

"I had an uncle diagnosed with leukaemia who unfortunate passed away from that least year," Yolande said.

"My dad has multiple myeloma and thankfully his treatment is going well.

"So it's just my way of giving back to help support the Leukaemia foundation. For families like mine that need the extra support."

After losing all of her waist-length hair to the shave, Yolande described the experience as "liberating".

"It's amazing to see the school's willingness to get behind something so close to me. It warms your heart."

Community support specialist from the Leukaemia Foundation, Adrian Leggett, said the money raised will go towards the foundation's ability to help the 110,000 people in Australia with leukaemia.

"The money from Shave goes to financial services, counselling, accommodation for regional families as well as the ongoing search for a cure," Mr Leggett said. "It just means everything to get back out after two years of COVID to these events where there is so much colour and kids having fun while supporting a great cause."

Since they opened donations at the beginning of February, Merewether High captains and prefects have hosted a range of World's Greatest Shave fundraiser events including a Bunnings sausage sizzle, Crazy Sock Day and a Bake Sale.

"We've also got the Raffle for a Remedy," prefect Cooper Ivory said.

"In that we've got a four person reservation at Chevals restaurant, we've got heaps of gift vouchers to local business, Knights jerseys, Jets jerseys. We've got over $6000 in prizes donated from the community."

School principal Rochelle Dooley said she is "incredibly proud" of the students involved and thankful to the Newcastle community.

"We are very fortunate to part of such a great community not just withing our school but also within the wider community," Ms Dooley said. "The way the students have gone out to businesses and sought support and seeing the way the community has responded has just been amazing."

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