Theodora Children's Trust
As some of you may know, BabyBlooms is extremely proud to support the Theodora Children’s Trust. We have a range of products in our Theodora collection and donate £5.00 from each sale to the charity.
So what is Theodora’s Children’s Trust and where does our money go? It is without doubt one of the most inspiring and truly unique charities and their tireless work to create laugher and giggles for poorly children is just staggering.
The charity was founded in 1994 by André and Jan Poulie. When André was a child, he had a serious accident which meant he had to spend months in hospital. His mother, Théodora (and now the charity’s namesake) used to visit him every day. André always remembers how much his mother made him laugh and how her positivity and optimism helped hospital seem a less scary place. André and his brother Jan set up the charity to bring the same kind of happiness to other children poorly in hospital. Hospital can be a scary place for anyone especially for children who are surrounded by things alien to their normal life such as medical equipment, tests and different people. Theodora’s Trust believe that despite their illness children are children before they are a patient and should be treated as such with fun and laughter and above all respite from their illness.
André and Jan introduced two Giggle Doctors to Great Ormond Street and now 18 years on they have a team of 22 trained Theodora Giggle Doctors, who visit more than 60,000 children with their families every year.
So what’s a Giggle Doctor? Giggle Doctors are specialist entertainers, trained by the charity to work in the hospital environment and with children with disabilities. The Giggle Doctors come from a variety of backgrounds and include actors, entertainers, teachers, magicians, musicians and singers.
Each of the 22 undergoes medical workshops as well as artistic training and learn about child development, infection control and child bereavement as well as the impact of serious illness and bereavement on families as a whole. You can meet each Giggle Doctor on the charity’s website www.theodora.org.uk and each one is also trained to communicate with children with special needs. All of the Giggle Doctors inject fun and laughter into the lives of the children they visit.
Every £5.00 we donate from sales pays for a Giggle Doctor visit which is amazing. We have raised over £X for the charity so far and on 12th June we attended a wonderful reception for Theodora at Number 10 Downing Street. The event was hosted by the lovely Samantha Cameron and it was amazing to see all the charity’s hard work recognised. Please take a look at our Theodora collection and do check out the Theodora’s Childrens Trust website to see other ways in which you can support this unique and worthy cause.
