For the past year or so, I have been following a small Finnish charity organisation, which is run by a team of four people whose goal is to make this world a better place. They do this for the children with terminal diagnosis and their families who need respite or assistance. The charity is called we4you.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I am not affiliated with we4you or do I get anything (except that happy, fuzzy feeling) from writing this blog text. I am sharing this as I feel that their work needs to be recognised.

Their website, when you visit it, is quite plain but nice and informative. Sadly, it is only in Finnish, but as they only work within Finnish borders, maybe that is understandable.

So what do they do then?

Like I said, we4you offer assistance to families whose children or babies have been diagnosed with rare or severe illnesses. They oftentimes work together with companies who donate small gifts for the sick children who are at hospitals or other companies who offer respite weekend getaways for the stressed parents. And that is just one part. They also organise fund raisers in case bereaved parents need assistance with funeral costs or to organising the funeral of the child. In other words, they work on the grass-roots level. And this, for me at least, means a lot.

What prompted me to write about them?

Recently, the Finnish newspapers ran a sad story of a child patient, who passed away suddenly because of a Streptococcus infection. It was a huge news, and even bigger blow to the single mother. The news obviously concentrated on the “how can this kind of thing happen” and “whose fault was it” aspect of the whole story, and only later I saw a Facebook post from we4you about a fundraiser for the bereaved mother, who was not just single mother, but currently also unemployed and now almost unable to function because of the grief. She had contacted the charity organisation, and they immediately jumped into action and started to offer assistance to her.

Why I wanted to write this text is because I want everyone to know what kind of great good even few people can manage. We all have the power within us to help and carry each other because that is strength, and that shows compassion. And those are the qualities we all have within us.