Who and what is Transplant Kids?
Let me share
a little about who we are and how this website came into being...
My name is Catriona (Cat to friends).
I am the founder of this
website, webmaster, administrator & general catsbody!
(OK I admit it's a passion!)
This is me & the family.
William (my partner) had just ran The Great North Run
2009, raising funds for the Childrens Liver Disease Foundation (just
one of the charities we support).
Around 5 yrs ago we were sitting chatting one night about some of
the emails we'd received from people who had looked at the website
I'd created to tell our son's life story "Aaron's Gift of Life" (no
longer online) and that it had given some families hope regarding
their own child's future.
It was Aaron's Dad, William, who suggested creating a website with a
forum for children and their families about organ transplants, the
name "Transplant Kids" quickly followed and we ranted with
excitement. We knew there wasn't anything quite like it, the
information on the internet tended to be all adult orientated &
organ specific, nothing was geared up for children and their
families.
It took a fair wee bit of research and finding suitable graphics as
well as getting the content proof read by some play specialists and
transplant consultants and after a few months Transplant Kids was
created.
Transplant Kids went live the 1st year Aaron attended the British
Transplant Games in Norwich in August 2004. It was pretty quiet for
sometime but soon the word got out and links were made to the site
from all over the UK and around the world some like the USA and
Australia.
Organ donation & organ transplantation really does make a world of a
difference!
It's still a fairly quiet corner of cyberspace but the forum now has
over 100 members consisting of families with children who may need a
life saving organ transplant, children who have received an organ
transplant, families of children who have received
an organ transplant, donor families and organ transplant related
charities as well as the odd health professional. They are not all
active posters but we do have a nice wee community.
We are not a charity nor an organization, we are quite simply a
family affected by organ donation/transplantation who set up &
maintain the website ourselves. Up until the past few years we were self
funded (out of our own pocket) but now we are thankful to be in
receipt of a kind donation of financial support covering some of the
website’s running costs from a wonderful little charity called
Making
it Better - The Daniel Courtney Trust.
Our aim is to offer relevant information, mutual support through
TK's Forum, contacts & links to appropriate organizations &
charities as well as creating much needed organ donor awareness.
We send out TK's e-newsletter (via email) every month to keep
our forum members updated on what's going on in TK's Forum and in
the transplant community in general.
I keep the site and forum running relatively smoothly with the
occasional "cry for help" from my techy webwise friend Col.
It truly makes it all worthwhile when we get feedback from people who
have found what they were looking for in Transplant Kids, that it's
achieved what we initially intended it to do.
Contact email:
info@transplantkids.co.uk
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