Different but making a difference

Jun 11, 2011

I’m posting to explain why we may not always respond quickly to messages. Post Pals isn’t your normal charity, it is basically run by 3 of us from beds and (and our hospital beds) which we are confined to.

For most charity workers an extra hours work means less time to do some housework or to socialise, to me it results in hours of total paralysis or spending the night feeling awful, pain through the roof (morphine doesn’t touch it) and being violently sick. The other 2 of us have health repercussions from doing things too. We are willing to go through this though as it’s the price we pay for knowing a terminally ill child had something in their last days to smile about or a child stuck in hospital feels not forgotten.

We don’t have a big PR machine in the background, sending our cutest kids stories out to get donations or send constant requests for money (we need donations to keep running and the more we get the more we can do but we want people to feel they can make a difference with just a postage stamp), we also don’t have a dedicated fundraising team, an outreach team, a grants officer. We are just young people (who were forced out of education by health), with no little black book of contacts but unlike most charities we aim to provide daily support to sick kids AND siblings every single day.

We do our utter most best because we care about every single one of our kids. We maybe different but we make a huge difference.

It is a very wonderful thing that people who do not know you, have never spoken to you, can take the time and trouble to make a difference to your life in such a special and significant way. It is not just about receiving a card, so many other things are within it – compassion, warmth, friendship, support and love, and we can never truly explain how that helps”, Kelly Mum to Chloe G, aged 7, Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia