Make-A-Wish Foundation News:
ALBUQUERQUE — This year the Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Mexico won two prestigious awards as part of Make-A-Wish America’s annual conference, held virtually in the last week of October due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Each year, Make-A-Wish America selects award recipients from the 59 chapters across the country. This year, the Make-A-Wish New Mexico chapter received two awards; the Infinite Wish Award & the National Employee Gift for Wish Excellence Award.
The Infinite Wish Award celebrates a wish that sparks widespread and meaningful community participation and exemplifies the Foundation’s vision that people everywhere share the power of a wish.
Make-A-Wish New Mexico won this award for the granting of Sam’s wish to give back to healthcare workers fighting on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sam wished to create kits to help healthcare workers re-enter their homes following a shift. Kits were delivered to over 200 healthcare workers at Presbyterian Hospital, Lovelace Medical Center and UNM Hospital.
Here is a link to the video outlining the other nominees for this award and the acceptance of the award by Make-A-Wish New Mexico’s President & CEO Sara Lister. https://youtu.be/34oPnVbfIRw
The National Employee Gift for Wish Excellence Award is awarded to chapters that exhibit exemplary amounts of passion and drive to enhance their wish granting capacity. This award comes with a $20,000 prize to help grant more wishes at the chapter. Here is a link to the video showing the award presentation to Make-A-Wish New Mexico: https://youtu.be/C8fpj9U5GF0.
“We are honored to be recognized for Sam’s wish and all of the wishes we granted this past year. COVID-19 has greatly impacted our organization, but we want the community to know that wishes are still happening, and hope is not cancelled or postponed,” Lister said. “The Make-A-Wish New Mexico team is one of the smallest in the nation but because of amazing New Mexicans from all walks of life, we are able to grant life-changing wishes for children battling critical illnesses and we encourage everyone to visit newmexico.wish.org and make a donation today.”
New Mexico Wish kids and their families, along with members of the Make-A-Wish New Mexico Board of Directors put together a thank you video to show their appreciation. The video can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a3ZUwg0TYY.
About Make-A-Wish
Make-A-Wish creates life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. We seek to bring every eligible child’s wish to life because every child deserves a childhood. Research shows children who have wishes granted can build the physical and emotional strength they need to fight their illness. This year, we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the wish that inspired the founding of the organization in 1980. Since then, Make-A-Wish has become the world’s leading children’s wish-granting organization, serving children in every community in the United States and in nearly 50 countries worldwide. Together, generous donors, supporters, staff and more than 34,000 volunteers across the U.S. grant a wish every 33 minutes, on average, somewhere in the country. Make-A-Wish New Mexico on average, grants over one hundred life-changing wishes per year for children battling critical illnesses across the state.
