JustGiving community raises £10,000 for Child’s i Foundation in 38 hours to save baby Joey’s life.
The generosity of JustGiving’s community of 12 million charity supporters often amazes us. Together their donations can make a life-changing difference – not least in the case of baby Joey.
Child’s i Foundation created an appeal page in August 2010 with a fundraising target of £10,000. The money was needed to pay for life-saving surgery for Joey, who was the first baby to be adopted after being helped by the charity. This target was smashed within 38 hours, with 250 donations, and Joey’s life was saved.
Lucy Buck, Child’s i Foundation’s Project Director, is over the moon:
“We have been completely overwhelmed by the generosity of the JustGiving community – the page set up to raise money for a life-saving operation for Joey smashed the £10,000 target in 38 hours. It is hard not to be affected by Joey’s story and how people could make a difference to his life. Joey is a healthy, happy boy thanks to the JustGiving community.”
Child’s i posted this video on the JustGiving page along with photos of Joey and his parents to show supporters what their donations meant.
“We made the video to show all the amazing donors just what a difference they have made to Joey’s life and how much that means to his parents, as well as to us at Child’s i,” explains Lucy.
The charity also updated its message on their JustGiving page, telling supporters of Joey’s progress:
“Joey was abandoned in a public taxi park when he was just 4 weeks old. Before Child’s i Foundation, Joey would probably have spent his life in long-term institutional care. Instead, after just six weeks with us, he was adopted by a Desire and George, a wonderful Ugandan couple. He is cherished by a loving family and has a wonderful future ahead of him. Last week we found out that Joey is suffering from a critical stenosis of his pulmonary artery. Joey is relying on the temporary structures of his heart that are necessary for babies in the womb; these should have closed up within days of his birth but have miraculously remained. Because there was no-one in East Africa who could perform the surgery on a 4 month-old, we put out this appeal for help.
“Donations flooded in from around the world and reading all of your beautiful messages of support have kept Joey’s family going over the last few days. More than 250 of you contributed more than £10,000 and Joey is now in Johannesburg.”
After Joey returned home, Child’s i created another video, updating supporters on the happy ending.
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