The Children’s Wish Foundation has been granting wishes to children with serious medical problems for decades, providing a brief respite from hospital stays and illness. Gay Oldhaver, Provincial Director with the Children’s Wish Foundation wants to continue granting those wishes, and has been going around Saskatchewan talking about what the foundation does in the province and promoting the Children’s Wish Lottery with the Wishes and Dreams tour.
Wishes are granted to children from three to seventeen who have been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, as determined by a medical advisory board. Once eligible, the Foundation has a conversation with the child about what they are dreaming about.
“Sometimes it’s a really small dream that grows and grows and becomes really big. Sometimes it starts really big and we have to bring it back down to a realistic size. For example, one child wanted a monkey, and even though we don’t have a law against having a monkey per se in Saskatchewan, getting my hands on a monkey would be rather difficult, so we had to bring that child around and we settled on an entertainment wish. Another wish, a little guy just wanted a little handheld gaming system, and that one we developed a little bit more around that wish.”
Once the wish has been decided, the wheels start to turn to make it possible, to source what is required and handle the logistics to make it happen, Oldhaver explains. While it’s not always possible to deliver it in person, she says they do try to do that as much as possible.
“That is the moment of truth when you see that smile on that face.”
There have been over 1,000 wishes granted in the province since 1984, and Oldhaver says that wish kids have grown up to be active volunteers. The foundation grants between 60 to 70 wishes a year in the province, and the average cost of a wish is about $10,000.
“It can provide them an opportunity to literally dream... We can’t fix diseases and we can’t solve health issues, but we can provide a moment of joy, a moment of happiness and a moment of memories for those families. That’s what keeps us going from one wish to the next. There are days when it feels like you’re not doing very much, but if you keep in focus that one moment of memory and one moment of joy, it helps us to be able to keep smiling for those families and participate in those moments with them.”
The primary fundraiser for the foundation is the Children’s Wish Lottery. The grand prize is one million dollars, and people who get in before the early bird deadline of October 1 can also win their choice of vehicles or $70,000. There are also tickets available for a vacation for life or a prize of $200 weekly for a year.
The lottery used to give away a house, but moved to a cash grand prize. One, as they moved to make the lottery more relevant to the province as a whole, having a house located in Saskatoon made it less appealing. The other reason was that since they gave an option of either cash or the home, nobody ever actually took the home as a prize, instead taking the cash payout every time.
Anyone interested in buying tickets can visit wishlottery.ca.
