The Maria Watt Birmingham Foundation for Childhood & Teenage Leukaemia Registered Charity No 1118733

The aims of this Charitable Trust are:-

To establish an ongoing fund which will provide funding for specific research into the causes of Leukaemia and other Cancers in Children and Teenagers.

To raise awareness of these devastating illnesses.

To provide support to Children & Teenagers battling this illness and supporting the building of a specialist teenage cancer unit.

We have established this Charitable Trust following the loss of our beloved daughter Maria, who developed Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia in June 2005.

Leukaemia is Britain’s largest childhood killer and although there are many new treatments, the incidence of this devastating illness is increasing.  We therefore need to find out what causes this illness and try and to find ways of protecting our children against it and hopefully eradicate it in the future.  We need to raise awareness of this illness.  If it can happen to our beautiful, intelligent, healthy child then it can happen to anyone and parents need to be aware of the signs of this illness which you would never suspect were anything other than common childhood/teenage ailments.

Any child can be struck down with Leukaemia at any time.  The loss of our precious Maria came as an enormous shock to us and we know that our lives will never be the same again.  We find it difficult to understand how a healthy girl can suddenly become ill and die.  We didn’t know much about Leukaemia but we sure do now.  We feel that we need to raise awareness amongst parents and look into ways of preventing this devastating illness, by supporting research into the causes. 

Today, 6 Teenagers will hear the words "you have cancer".  Tomorrow 6 more teenagers will hear these words and 6 more the day after that and so it will continue.

Our wish is to achieve something worthwhile as a lasting legacy to Maria, which we hope will continue long into the future.