You have probably heard of the Make-A-Wish foundation, but have you heard about the “Share Your Ears’ campaign? Well, Make-A-Wish is a nonprofit organization that grants children a wish. These children are specifically those who are severely ill, the most common wish that children ask for is a trip to Disney. So, it makes it logical that Disney would partner with Make-A-Wish to support the families and make the children’s wishes come true. The Walt Disney Company is involved in more than half of the granted wishes through Make-A-Wish. So, with many children wanting their dream of going to Disney to come true, it makes sense why the organizations decided to partner together. In celebration of Mickey’s 90th birthday celebration, Disney and Make-A-Wish decided to partner up and create a campaign called “Share Your Ears”.
This campaign was spread throughout social media. If you wanted to support, you would take a picture of you wearing your Disney ears, post it with the hashtag #shareyourears, and then Make-A-Wish would donate $5 for every post. Throughout the month of November, by uploading your picture to Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, you were helping children with chronic illnesses get their dreams to come true. Over 1.3 million people ended up participating in this campaign. This left Make-A-Wish with a total of over three million dollars raised. This money would help children and their families cover expenses.
What does this mean for the families? When the child decides what they want as their wish, Make-A-Wish makes sure that they cover all expenses. In this case, they would cover transportation, hotel, tickets, food, and anything you could imagine. According to one child who had a wish granted, Macy, she was picked up in a limo and treated like a princess throughout the duration of her trip. With the help of the foundation, they really go to infinity and beyond for the children and their families.
Through this campaign, Make-A-Wish was able to gain a wider engagement to people all over. Many people were able to discover what the foundation was, and donate money on their own. The foundation grew over 554% engagement. This is beneficial because more children and their families are able to have an added stress lifted off of their shoulders.
How do we feel about this campaign? We personally think that this was such an amazing project and other companies should do more like it. The amount of accessibility is what makes this such a good project, people didn’t really have to go out of their way to help all they had to do was snap a picture and post it with the hashtag and that changed the lives of so many kids. This project has made many people who knew nothing about Make-A-Wish more informed than ever. We could not imagine the amount of stress a family and a child must feel when dealing with a chronic illness. As children, we were very fortunate to be able to have the opportunity to go to Disney and experience the magic. We are so exhilarated that children are able to have their dreams come true now because of Make-A-Wish.
By audrey nawa and emilia kulak