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I wish to fly in a helicopter

Three people and a child smile inside a Build-A-Bear Workshop. The child, dreaming of Jens Wish to Fly In A Helicopter, holds a teddy bear and stands by a large bear mascot. One woman holds a booklet titled “Esey’s Wish.” Stuffed animals decorate the background.
A young child with a bald head, wearing a red shirt and a nasal feeding tube, smiles and poses on a hospital bed with a blanket. Medical equipment and a Connect 4 game are visible as Jens Wish to Fly In A Helicopter fills the room with hope.

When six-year-old Jen from New Zealand was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, her mum Helen says it was the hardest time of their lives. “Jen wasn’t taking it good. She was upset. Our family was upset as well. We were trying to get used to the fact that she had cancer.”

Chemotherapy was grueling for Jen, who, according to her Mom, “became a different person from before she started her journey. She was more tired, and she didn’t want to play as much.”
Three people smile in front of a black helicopter near a beach, celebrating Jens Wish to Fly In A Helicopter. Two adults in blue shirts stand with a child holding stuffed animals and wearing sunglasses by the open helicopter door.
Wishes are the product of a child’s wildest dreams and imagination, and Jen loves superheroes. In her words, her superpower would be “to have a long stretchy neck that could stretch in and out so I could see everything from up high”. So, Jen’s wish was to fly up high in a helicopter and look down at the world from above – just like she would if she had her superpower!
Jen had an amazing time in the helicopter where she got to look down on the city including the hospital she had spent so much time in, shouting, “this is so fun! I’m having so much fun!” After the helicopter landed, Jen and her family had a teddy bear’s picnic – it was the perfect conclusion to a magical day.

Jen’s cancer journey had stolen so much of her childhood. It kept her in hospital, where she had to undergo painful and tiring chemotherapy treatments. But knowing her wish would come true, helped give her the resilience she needed to get through it. And we know that the positive impacts of a wish continue long after the wish has been granted for both the child and their family.

“Together we make the impossible, possible.”

Jen’s wish would not have been possible without the support of countless WishMakers from her wish volunteer Deana, through to corporate partners and individual donors. But more wish kids like Jen are counting on you. Become a WishMaker this World Wish Month.