Make-A-Wish Foundation® UK grants magical wishes to children and young people fighting life-threatening illnesses. Since being established in the UK in 1986, we have granted over 5,300 wishes.
Make-A-Wish has no cures to offer and all too often some of our endings are sad but, during desperate times when there seems to be no hope, Make-A-Wish steps in and provides positive and uplifting relief. Most of all, a wish granted brings a time of magic and joy for the special children and families we serve.
Make-A-Wish is currently granting around 8-10 wishes a week to children aged 3 - 17 years. Our target is to increase this to 20 wishes a week by 2010 which will ensure that every child living in the UK with a life-threatening illness is able to experience the magic of a Make-A-Wish wish.
The charity employs 35 staff. 21 are based in the head office in Camberley, Surrey, and 14 are regionally based in Glasgow, York, Belfast, Peterborough, Winchester, Birmingham and Bristol. Make-A-Wish also has a network of around 500 specially trained volunteers who undertake the majority of the visits to the wish children.
Anyone can refer a child to Make-A-Wish and, as long as the child fulfils our criteria of being aged 3 - 17 and having a medically diagnosed life-threatening illness, we will undertake to grant their wish.
Make-A-Wish grants the wish of the child to the whole family, including all siblings up to the age of 17, as we believe that the whole family is deeply affected by the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and the many treatments and hospital visits they have to undertake. Our aim in granting the wish is to give the whole family a magical experience that they can share together and remember forever.
A wish can be anything but they typically fall into four categories - I wish to have, I wish to be, I wish to meet, I wish to visit/see. Occasionally a child's imagination comes up with something very special - for instance, Ben who wanted to meet Batman and Rose who wanted to be a Princess for a day and had a castle, butler and a horse and carriage at her disposal!
The cost of a wish ranges from a few hundred to many thousands of pounds as each wish is uniquely built around the individual child and their preferences and circumstances. There are many unseen costs to granting a wish - for example, this year our medical insurance bill for the wish families will be over £160,000 - and we often have to cover unforeseen events. We are also regularly called upon to organise the issuing of passports and visas.
Make-A-Wish receives no government or lottery support and is completely reliant on voluntary support to fund our work. We are constantly seeking funds to enable our wish granting to continue and expand we would like to hear from anyone wanting to support us via donations and fundraising activities.
Please call me if you would like any additional information about our work. If you wanted to watch a wish in action, please log onto our website www.make-a-wish.org.uk and click on 'Watch a Wish'. Click on 'Wishes' for more information on recent wishes granted.
Make-A-Wish is a registered charity:
Charity Registration No. (England and Wales) 295672