You can help bring
childhood back
You can
help bring
childhood back
Our WishMaker community needs you! Become a WishMaker by donating, fundraising, or signing up to support our mission.
Make a Donation
Making a donation is the simplest way of supporting our mission. Your regular donation can secure the wishes of children diagnosed with critical illnesses and help us plan for the future.
Fundraise In Your Community
Increase your impact by turning to your passion, hobby or network to raise funds for Make-A-Wish International.
Subscribe
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World Wish Month
Each April, in honor of the founding wish, Make-A-Wish is recruiting the next generation of WishMakers. Because wishes don’t come true by luck or chance. They come true because of WishMakers who donate, fundraise or lend their voice to our cause. We are powered by their passion. We depend on their talents. We grant more wishes because of their continuous commitment and support to a cause bigger and more important than themselves. We are nothing without our WishMakers. But we need more. We need you. Because all it takes to make wishes come true, is you.
Read more about Chris’s wish below.
Lilah’s Wish
Lilah became sick at just 2 years old and as she got progressively weaker, her mum just knew something was wrong. After extensive doctor’s visits and tests, she was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at three years old.
Lilah’s mum Amelia says when the Make-A-Wish volunteers asked Lilah what she wished for, there was one obvious answer. Amelia believes her wish to fly with real wings came from being stuck at home and in hospital and that to her, flying meant freedom.
The wish that inspired a movement
It started with a single wish on April 29, 1980: 7-year-old Chris, struggling with leukemia, wanted to be a police officer for a day. Six people answered the call, rallied the entire community, and granted a wish that lifted Chris up during his darkest days. These original WishMakers were inspired by the impact the wish had on Chris and vowed to do more. A global movement was born.
Today, Make-A-Wish has been granting life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses for 44 years, in 50 countries across 6 continents all over the world. More than 585,000 wishes have been granted since then.
But the work is far from done. Thousands of eligible children are waiting for their wishes to be granted. And there are many more we aren’t reaching. As long as children face the devastating reality of a critical illness diagnosis, they’ll need WishMakers to help restore their childhood.
Critical illness steals childhood from a child, but a wish-come-true has the power to restore that feeling of childhood. Thanks to the positive emotions, strength and long-lasting impact a wish brings, a child and their family have the chance to experience life beyond illness once again.
Become a WishMaker today to help grant a wish and return a stolen childhood.