It’s a new year and it’s fair to say that, at Wishlist,
we’re pretty happy and excited about it.
This year will see, among many other things, the growth of
our accommodation options for families needing affordable options to be close
to a local hospital.
In April we will open The
House the Coast Built thanks to Wishlist Corporate Partner, Ausmar Homes and more than 80 local
businesses who contributed to this, Ausmar’s third charity home for Wishlist.
You won’t believe how impressive it is and you won’t believe the size of a home
that can be built on a 450m2 block of land bought by Mix FM’s Give Me 5 for Kids. Ausmar Homes, you’ve done us proud and
we couldn’t be more grateful to everyone who’s played a part in bringing this
dream to fruition.
It’s a team effort here at Wishlist and the Sunshine Coast
continues to make local health services the best they can possibly be for our
families.
Some highlights in the last couple of months include:
- Jetts
Peregian raising $515.60 through their Wishlist Treadmill fundraiser for the
Birth Centre, currently on our wish list. This generous organisation donated $5
for every kilometre walked on the treadmill on 9th December. - Sunshine
Coast Social Bowls Club continuing their support of our cause with another
donation of $1,500. - Our Griffith
University Medical Students raising $340 for Wishlist at their recent
cocktail function and we wish them the very best for the year ahead. - Armesto’s
Transport at Beerwah donating $30,000 to the Children’s Ward, in appreciation
of the wonderful care received by their family recently at SCUH. - Ted
O’Brien MP, Member for Fairfax directing a $10,000 grant towards
maintenance work needed at Reed House, our accommodation facility beside
Nambour Hospital. - $6,201 being raised for Camp Diabetes, an initiative supported by Wishlist for more than
fifteen years. - Burnside
State School’s $130 donation to Wishlist. - Another $250 donation by Club Glasshouse who has supported paediatric services to the tune
of $30,000 over the past ten years.
Wishlist’s Holiday Raffle raised $11,000 thanks to the
generosity of Wild Spirit Adventures
and Suncity Travel. We couldn’t be
more grateful to Wayne Wetherall, who is a long-time supporter of Wishlist
through his many years of donating a Kokoda Spirit adventure to Mix FM’s Give
Me 5 for Kids. Thanks Wayne and thanks to everyone who has directed a dollar
our way for what ever local health cause is dear to your heart.
So, while you’re all generously raising the money we are, as
usual, busy spending it on equipment and initiatives that make a difference to
families in our local hospitals.
We continue to fund the local Clown Doctor visits at SCUH thanks to Mix FM’s Give Me 5 for Kids
last year, and we’re delighted to announce the arrival of the $130,000
inter-hospital transfer equipment for the Paediatric Critical Care Unit (pictured), also funded by the appeal.
The $16,000 Music Room at Dove Palliative Care Unit at Caloundra is complete and our
priceless Music Therapist, Tracie Wicks is thrilled to have space for patients
to immerse themselves in the gift of music. We’re about to “launch” this space
so if you’d like to see the finished product please let us know and you can
come along to celebrate.
Wishlist funds Music Therapy at Dove Palliative Care
entirely from donations to the service.
It’s one of the most amazing things we do for patients and we couldn’t
be happier to set Tracie up with her own space in which to grow the service.
We also continue to fund Yoga Therapy in the Children’s Ward each week, and Pet Therapy
across our hospitals in paediatric wards, dementia and intensive care
wards. More on that later.
We’ve just placed an order for a special camera for Nambour Oral Health to photograph
lesions or conditions that require documentation and
monitoring, for example mouth cancer. Wishlist funded the original camera years
ago and it’s due for replacement years later. We consider it’s $3,923 well
spent.
So too is $2,043 for Voice Amplification
Devices and Expiratory Muscle Strength Trainers for Motor Neurone and Parkinsons Disease patients, contributing to
quality of life by helping them communicate but also strengthening swallowing
function.
We’ve also committed $10,400 to an edible and therapeutic garden, adjacent
the Wishlist-funded Wellness Garden at Nambour Hospital, to encourage a sense
of wellbeing in staff, patients and visitors.
We’ve just taken delivery of the long-awaited 3D printer for Radiation Therapy services (pictured below) thanks to a grant from the Queensland Gambling Community Benefit Fund.
We’re waiting on the start to works at Gympie Hospital on a rehabilitation garden
for patients of the hospital, and completion of a paediatric room in the
Emergency Department, funded by the Wishlist Jazz and Wine Festival and
proceeds of our Wishlist Coffee House.
Speaking of which, if you have friends or
family with time on their hands in Gympie we’re in desperate need of volunteers at the Wishlist Coffee House.
This wonderful enterprise raises funds for Gympie Hospital and is getting
busier and busier thanks to the culinary delights of new Wishlist Coffee House
Manager, Jacques Martin.
We welcome back Infectious Clothing company, McDermott Aviation and Quikcorp to the Wishlist family, who continue their support as a Wishlist Corporate Partner.
McDermott Aviation recently played a
major part in the bushfire crisis and we salute the team for their courageous
and generous support of our Australian community.
This month we embraced the new Mercure Kawana Waters, previously Best
Western Plus in a welcoming hug and thank them for their continued support as
Wishlist Corporate Partners, along with BOQ
Buderim and Maroochydore, FTA
Accountants and Get Wines Direct.
Wishlist Corporate Partner Quikcorp has
launched Bioweed, an organic alternative to toxic weedkillers on the market and
they’re generously donating proceeds of every sale to our work. Check out 92.7Mix FM Caroline Hutchinson’s
facebook post showing the amazing results of Bioweed in her garden!
We’re so proud to welcome Push Productions as a Corporate
Partner, who have generously agreed to cover the printing cost of our Daisy
Chain over the year ahead, and much more. Thanks Paul Morton and team for your
generous support of our work.
Also a warm welcome back to Telstra Business Technology Centre Sunshine
Coast, Wishlist Alliance Partners who are working to keep Wishlist
operational costs and that of our accommodation facilities to a minimum.
Thanks to our Alliance Partners Wealthmed for your continued support after so many years. Our partnership programme contributes more than $250,000 to our work
each year and every partner is pivotal to the role we play on the Coast.
Sunshine
Toyota has helped cancer patients, funded local research
projects and countless new mums have opened their homes to a visit from a Child
Health Nurse, who drove out to see them in a car generously donated every year
by Sunshine Toyota. They also provide Wishlist with a splendid new vehicle
every year, which helps keep our operational costs down.
Darren Venning responded with concern, and a little
humour, to my call earlier this month reporting my second "incident"
in a matter of months involving their wonderful vehicle, and the team greeted
me warmly when I brought it in to be repaired, handing me the keys to a
fabulous new Camry to tide us over until the work was done.
We welcomed F45
Birtinya and Sippy Downs and Melly’s
Home Cleaning Service to WishlistConnect.
Check out their offers at wishlistconnect.org
How lucky we are to have you all as part of the team.
Thanks for all that you for Wishlist and for Coast families.
To wrap it up I wanted to remind you that every cent
counts when it comes to your support of the Coast’s local hospital foundation.
We see just as big a smile on the faces of our
nurses when we deliver bubbles and colouring kits to help them calm our
children, as we do on the faces of the doctors when we deliver a $32,000 3D
printer for Radiation Therapy services.
Whether it’s the relief on the tired face of a lady
being checked in to Reed House after
a long day beside her husband in the Stroke Ward at SCUH, or a tearful smile
from the recipient of a handmade quilt donated to the patients of the Adem
Crosby Unit by LINUS or CWA, know that your thoughtful, generous donation to
Wishlist makes a difference.
Prior to Christmas, our Delta Dog Norman was invited
to the ICU to visit a patient who’d been there for some time. During the visit a
nurse called him over to another patient who was missing his own little dog so
much he’d bunched up his hospital blanket into a small mound and said he imagined
it was his little dog sitting beside him on the bed. Those who witnessed what
was to be one of two special bedside visits to this man will never forget that
it’s often the smallest of gestures, the simple moments with a furry friend,
that matter most.
I recall a gentleman walking into the Wishlist
office last year to make a donation to the ward where he’d recently been a
guest for quite a few months. He told me he’d been treated so well and how
grateful he was to the doctors and the nurses who had cared for him. He told me
through eyes willing with tears that at one point he was so frustrated with his
slow progress back to recovery, and the loss of his ability to move and
function that he almost gave up. It was then that a young nurse came into his
room and, seeing his frustration at trying to get out of bed, simply touched
his hand and told him it would all be OK. That, he said, was all he needed to
keep going. A simple act of kindness “made me feel I mattered” and now fully
recovered, he wanted to say thanks.
Be kind, be generous and know that we all very much
matter in this crazy world.
Thank you for your support of Wishlist.
Lisa Rowe
