What Is The Impact Of Granting Wishes?

We are on a quest to bring every eligible child’s wish to life, because wishes are an important part of a child’s treatment journey. Wishes provide kids hope when they need it most, and research shows they have effects on children’s overall well-being and health outcomes.

In fact, wishes have proven physical and emotional benefits that can give children with critical illnesses a higher chance of survival. When a wish is granted, a child replaces fear with confidence, sadness with joy and anxiety with hope. Such transformative moments are shared by wish families, Make-A-Wish staff, volunteers, and everyone involved. Even you, as a fundraiser and donor!

Why Wishes Matter

In 2015, Make-A-Wish Israel conducted a study to measure how wish-granting experiences influence medical outcomes of children with critical illnesses. The results revealed wishes not only increased hope, they also improved the children’s physical and emotional health. The wishes made the impossible, possible — helping children replace fear with confidence, sadness with joy and anxiety with hope. Such transformative moments are shared by wish families, Make-A-Wish staff, volunteers, and everyone involved. Even you, as a fundraiser and donor!

Learn more about how Make-A-Wish is helping children improve their emotional health more visibly and successfully than any other organization.

We don’t grant wishes for short-term smiles. We grant wishes to positively impact long-term health results*.

Make-A-Wish was the subject of a study to measure how wish-granting experiences influence the medical outcomes of children with cancer. Sixty-six children were evaluated using three different verified, respected, widely used assessment tools. The tools quantify hope, positive emotions, health-related quality of life and anxiety.

“It is possible that wishing enabled these children to dream about that seemed unobtainable, out of reach, and thus created an experience of achieving the impossible,” researchers wrote.

And if the impossible can happen once, children can believe in their ability to live with or even overcome their illnesses. That’s the real purpose of a wish.