The Make-A-Wish Foundation grants the wishes of children with life-threatening medical conditions. They have granted over 250,000 wishes worldwide since 1980. Their mission is to enrich the lives of these children through their wishes by providing hope, strength, and joy. They rely on donations, fundraisers, and community support to make children's wishes come true.
1. “I wish to
meet “I wish to meet
Selena real New York
Gomez” City firefighters”
“I wish to
“I wish to be a meet real
cowboy” Ballerinas”
2. Our Mission:
“We grant the wishes of
children with life-
threatening medical
conditions to enrich the
human experience with
hope, strength, and joy”
3. A little bit ourselves…
What is Make-A-Wish??
Well we were founded in 1980, after granting our
very first wish to Chris Greicius. Ever since we
have been fulfilling wishes for children with life-
threatening medical conditions. Our mission and
values are to impact the life of children by granting
their number one wish.
It is important to grant wishes to theses children
because they deserve to experience their dreams
come to life. We have worked very hard to grant
over 250,000 wishes world-wide and will continue
to do so.
4. The Process
.
Our four steps to making wishes come true:
1. Referrals- we rely on the referrals from doctors, parents
and even children. They must be between 21/2 and 18
years old and have never been granted a whish from a
make-a-wish foundation.
2. Medical Eligibility- to receive a wish, the child must be
diagnosed with a life threatening disease.
3. Finding the true wish- we send our wish
team(volunteers) to learn what the child's true wish, they
do this by connecting with the child and help them
explore their imagination.
4. Creating Joy-Finally our wish granters create an
unforgettable experience for the child
5. Our very first wish…
This is Chris Greicuis, and his wish was the
first we ever granted in 1980. Chris was a 7
year old boy who was dealing with
leukemia. Everyday he would dream of
becoming a police officer. One day U.S.
Customs Officer Tommy Austin had
befriended Chris and his mother, Linda
Bergendahl-Pauling. That meeting changed
Chris at age
7 Chris's life . Not only did he get to be an
officer, he received his own uniform, had a
tour over the city in a helicopter, and finally
passed his motorcycle proficiency test so
he can earn his wings to pin on his uniform.
Sadly Chris passes away, however he at
least got to live his dream and is celebrated
6. Some more wishes…..
“ I wish to
show Jack
Black my Kung
Fu Panda
moves”
“I wish to meet Tom
Brady”
7. Inputs
In order to run our very successful and effective organization
we need a bit of help. We rely on money from donations and
fundraisers that are held by our amazing volunteers. We also
have wonderful sponsors, who use their businesses to assist
us. For example Macy’s helps us by holding their annual
“Thanks for Sharing” campaign. Other sponsors include
The Walt Disney company, Delta Airlines, and even Toys-
R-Us. We have our wish granters who work hard to grant
wishes. The most important thing we need in our
organization, are the children. Our number one goal in our
organization is to make wishes come true for our children.
So we need your help, by referring them to our
organization.
8. Outcome and Outputs
We would have to say that in Make-A-Wish, our biggest reward
is the outcome of our program. We live to make wishes come
true for the innocent children who are dying and suffering from
incurable illnesses. It may take a lot of time and effort to make
these wishes come true. However when complete strangers
come together and help us out, it shows our children that our
world and society isn't unscrupulous and there is good
people who care about them.. The memories we create will
last a long time and will undergird our values and principles
in every single child. We want our children to know that even
if they are dealing with deadly illness, that doesn’t make life
unfair, and it shows them how to be strong. We are glad to
know that not only are we serving the children, but we are
also serving parents. This is why we are swollen with pride to
say that a wish is being granted every 38 minutes.
9. Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is a great part of our organization. We are
constantly thinking of different ways we can benefit the lives
of our children. The biggest part of our organization is to being
open to new ways of thinking. This allows us to create a
system in which we can allow our children to be creative. The
children are the ones who come up with their wishes and its
important for them to use their imagination. Because of this, it
is also important for our members to understand the different
viewpoints of others. This is another key point because this
allows us to understand the different needs of our parents and
children. We want our kids to be able to think critically.
Overall we want them to look for and understand the system
of meaning to our organization. We feel that it is important for
them to understand that we do this for them and that they
deserve this.
10. Critical action
We have to act critically to make our organization successful.
Everything we do has to be thought in a critical manner. We
are dealing with special children who are counting on us to
make their wishes come true. Therefore its important for all
of our members to engage thoroughly in the needs of our
kids. Since every child is dealing with different illnesses,
we need to try our best to serve them as much as we can.
We need to focus on specific understanding necessary
to reading the severity of these illnesses. Sadly, there are
times when we are dealing with children who are restricted
and we need to make sure we are conducting activities that
are safe fro everyone. That is why when we are making
critical actions, we must be able to connect to our
surroundings and to one another.
11. The Shuttleworth foundation
Please Help!!
Although we know, the Shuttleworth foundation focuses
more on philanthropy, we are certain that we can work
together in order to change some lives all over the world.
The Shuttleworth... Make-A-Wish Foundation…
* Looks for social advocates *We believe that our
who are helping to change the members are social advocates
world for the better and are who are helping change
seeking help from social society and the lives of the
mode. children who we work with.
We work with children all over
the world and we encourage
our children to think outside
the box. We believe that this
will allow our kids to
contribute to society, one day.
12. The Shuttleworth Foundation….
The Shuttleworth… Make-A-Wish
*provides money for active * We are actively trying to
leaders who are at the make a difference in kids lives.
forefront of social change. Our wish granters work hard
They recognize amazing to install a positive outlook on
people, and help fund. our kids lives. We work hard to
make them happy but to also
see the good in the world and
society. So that maybe one
day they can possibly help us
help other kids the way we
helped them.
13. How I relate to this…..
(student connection)
I am a strong believer that children are our future.
However it is sad that a great majority of the children
in our society are being affected by deadly illnesses. I
am so lucky to have never dealt with something as
heart-breaking as this. I connect to this cause because
I want to help sick kids. I want to grant their wishes. I
want to be able to say that I helped make a wish come
true. When I was in high school, I was actually part of
our Make-A-Wish club. Unfortunately, many students
lost interest in participating and we lost the club,
however this will not make me stop helping the cause.
My goal for this project is to grow more awareness
about this cause. I want more young adults to care as
much as I do.
14. Community Need
Its important to understand that the community
needs our organization. There are so many
innocent children living with critical illnesses. Who
spend their lives in hospitals. They deserve for
their dreams to come true. as a community we
need to come together and show these kids that
anything is possible. Our organization benefits the
family and friends of children who are suffering
form illnesses. Our community needs us because
we bring joy and happiness to our children who
are great dreamers. Our community needs us to
shine a light on our children. We give them hope
to keep fighting for their lives.
15. How you can get involved….
There are many ways you can get involved into our organization.
We are looking for people who want to make wishes come true.
If you are adept in helping the community, we need you! For
starters we can use volunteers for events, fundraisers, wish
granters, translators, office help and even public speaking.
Donating is another big part of our cause. You can donate
money, toys, computer equipment, shipping sprees, and even
airline miles. However if you want to be more hands on, you can
adopt-a-wish. Adopting a wish is more hands on but its just as
rewarding. You will work with our team members to pick a child,
help create the wish, and fund it. We love having the community
help us out, and most importantly we enjoy working in
uniformity to create beautiful memories. Please check us out
on: http://www.wish.org/