In November 2013, Gabrielle Alderson was diagnosed with an aggressive form of children’s cancer. After the diagnosis, Gaby herself, as well as family, friends and the school she attended, worked tirelessly to raise money to fund new treatments, research and raise awareness of the disease.

After battling Neuroblastoma, an aggressive form of children’s cancer, for almost three and a half years, Gaby very sadly passed away in March this year, aged 14.

Pupils at Queen Mary’s wearing their colourful wigs
Gaby presenting the cheque to Candlelighters

However, the fundraising efforts of those close to Gaby continued. An incredible £953.81 was raised at her funeral, which was donated to Candlelighters to help families like Gaby’s through the difficult journey presented by children’s cancer.

 

On top of this, Queen Mary’s School (attended by Gaby) raised over £5700, an astonishing amount of money that truly deserves to be recognised! The school held events such as ‘Wear A Wig Wednesday’, encouraging fellow pupils to come to school wearing a wig and make a small donation on arrival. They also held an autumn fair, with a tombola and stalls to fundraise for Candlelighters.

 

Mrs Carole Cameron, head teacher at Queen Mary’s School said: “Each year Queen Mary’s chooses a charity to support and we were delighted to make Candlelighters the focus of our fundraising efforts for the school year 2015-2016. The girls threw themselves into a wide range of fundraising activities with their usual enthusiasm, including a fashion show, a WOLF Run and a ‘Wear a Wig Wednesday’. We hope that the funds raised will make a valuable contribution to provide care for many children and their families, just as Candlelighters supported our own pupil Gabrielle Alderson and her family.”

 

From everybody here at Candlelighters we would like to say a massive thank you to the staff, pupils and parents at Queen Mary’s and of course to Gaby’s family and friends for helping to raise such a huge amount of money. It really does make such a difference to families affected by children’s cancer across Yorkshire.

 

 

 

 

Last summer we ran an amazing project called ‘Remember with Pride’ with a animation company called Twinvision. They worked with bereaved siblings to create a Wallace and Gromit style animation film based on a cherished memory that they had of their brother or sister.

The kids worked tirelessly on their animation from start to finish, which included drawing storyboards of their memories, creating the characters and sewing their clothes, making the sets, acting the scenes with the characters and finally adding voice overs. At the end of this project the child had their own animation on a DVD and was welcomed to an Oscar ceremony where their films were presented for the first time to their families.

During this whole process Twinvision filmed snippets of every stage from beginning to end, which resulted in an amazing documentary of the project!

We are very much looking forward to running this again this summer with more brothers and sisters.

Written by Natalie Kisby, Family Support Manager at The Square

If you are interested, please get in touch. The film of the project can be viewed below.