Make-A-Wish Washington and Alaska is celebrating 40 years. Meet a local volunteer
April is Volunteer Appreciation Month for Make-A-Wish, a nonprofit organization dedicated to granting wishes for children with chronic illnesses. This year the Washington and Alaska branch is celebrating its 40-year anniversary.
The national organization began in 1980, when a when boy battling leukemia wished to become a police officer, according to the Make-A-Wish website. His Phoenix community made his wish come true, and the organization was born.
“Our mission is to create life-changing wishes for kids facing critical illnesses. Childhood illness is unfair. Kids and families shouldn’t have to carry the weight, worry and uncertainty that come with it,” Jessie Elenbaas, associate director of communications and marketing for Make-A-Wish Washington and Alaska, said in an email to The Bellingham Herald. “When they do, Make-A-Wish is there like a warm embrace to remind them they aren’t alone. During a child’s darkest times, a wish becomes light.”
Here in Whatcom County, there are only two wish-granting volunteers, including Charlotte Pollard.
Wish Granters work in pairs to grant wishes for children in Whatcom County. Currently, there are 11 wishes that waiting to be granted, according to Elenbaas.
The Bellingham Herald sat down with Pollard to have a conversation about becoming a Make-A-Wish volunteer and the impact it’s had on her life. Here is part of the conversation, which has been edited down for clarity and length.
Question: How did you become a Wish Granting volunteer?
Pollard: I got involved when I came when I moved here from Santa Fe, New Mexico. I met a person I was volunteering at a museum, and I met a person who was a Make-A-Wish volunteer, and she really got me interested in it.
I partnered with her initially, she was also my mentor, and taught me a lot about it, and just listening to her talk about the joy she observed of kids. You are with a child who may still be ill or coming out of it, or they may be no cure, but it can be treatable.
You meet kids who are vulnerable, who are not really sure what all of this is about, but it sounds good. You try to get to know them a little bit, and then move them into the wishing that they want.
Q: How long does it take to grant a wish?
A: It varies with the wish. Wishes can fall within four or five categories. One of them is “I want to go,” and in a lot of those, especially for younger children, in grade school, but sometimes even in high school, they want to go to Disneyland in California, or they want to go to Disney World in Miami. They also get to go to Universal Studios in both places, too. Disney also has cruises, and they go to their own special islands, they own two those organizations are very, very good sponsors for all the Make a Wish chapters in the country.
Part of it is just timing. If they have a spot open for us that we can get in, you could go within a short period of time, as long as the paperwork is done, but there are some times when it takes a while because the families can’t go right away.
Another category of wishes is: “I want to have,” and that could be going to the mall. When I was getting trained, a wish was, “I want to have every color flip-flop from Walmart in my size.” So they went on a shopping spree. And it could be toys, it could be games, it could be anything!
There’s also “I want to meet” wishes. A lot of them are sports, and they want to do that, but sometimes it’s a famous person.
“I want to visit,” wishes tend to be the most expensive. I had one teenager who was a history buff, so he loved ancient history. His goal is to visit all the seven wonders of the ancient world, in his lifetime. That was his first wish. The one he wanted to see is the Chichen Itza pyramid in the Yucatan area Mexico, and it is in an area that is safe to go because that’s something that Make-A-Wish has to consider when it comes to a travel wish.
Q: Make-A-Wish coordinators book and buy anything associated with a wish. What are some of your responsibilities as a wish-granting volunteer?
A: Part of the wish volunteer is kind of staying in touch and keeping the wish kind of alive, so to speak. Sometimes museums and other kinds of venues will donate, have a bunch of tickets that they will give to Make-A-Wish in Seattle. Sometimes we meet in their home, yeah, and sometimes we’ll meet in a public space. It might be a park, if the weather is good, it could be in the library and in the Ferndale library, or it could be in a coffee shop, or something like that.
When a family travels internationally we have to make sure they have their passwords ready way ahead of time and things like that, and make sure that names are spelled correctly on their identification, because even flying from Seattle to Los Angeles requires an enhanced ID now, and so we have to make sure that any adult member of the family has those. So there’s lots of details that have to be worked out from the coordinators who help us and educate us, and then we act as that liaison with the family and make sure that they have the best experience possible.
Q: What does it mean to you to be a volunteer with Make-A-Wish?
A: I don’t have grandchildren. I love children, and I didn’t have my own, but I love them. I like the fun things to do. Like, I love to read stories, take them out the parks and kind of run around with them, make sure they’re safe. I’m fascinated by teenagers in terms of their wishes and desires and their plans for their future. So this, from beginning to end, allows me to interact with children in that way.
To become a Wish Granter or a Make-A-Wish volunteer, visit wish.org.