Cystic Fibrosis Update (5)

Our Cystic Fibrosis project continues growing day by day and we have already achieved so much that we should all be proud of (I certainly am). Recently, we sat down to discuss what the next step could be and through Ellie's connection to the organisation that we are raising money and awareness for itself, we thought it would be a good idea to ask whether we could have an interview with them. Although at first we had troubles with small things like arranging phone calls that worked for both ends, we managed to get ahold of them and discuss the topic.

Unfortunately, the organisation wasn't able to organise a meeting in person with them, but we will be able to have a phone-call-style-interview in the upcoming weeks. While this was a slight let down, their other offer made up for it and exceeded any of our expectations. They put us in contact with a young girl called Antonia, who is living with Cystic Fibrosis. We were able to arrange a face-to-face meeting with her and her mother, where we could ask her some questions and get an insiders glimpse into her daily struggles.

Initially, we arranged to meet Antonia on the 3rd June, but just before the date, we were told that sadly Antonia was in hospital at the time and wouldn't be able to make the interview. On top of that, we found out that she also had to miss a test at school that she had been studying hard for. This was extremely shocking and motivated me even more to contribute as much as possible to the project.

Ellie and Anna with Antonia 

We managed to reschedule it to the 10th of July and the interview took place with no complications. It was agreed that only two of us would go to interview her, mainly not to overwhelm Antonia and her mother, and also for ease. We decided that the best two to go were Ellie and Anna. Each of us who weren't able to go recorded a short video about themselves and discussed their personal involvement in the project. We each put in a short thank you to let her know just how grateful we are to be able to talk to her.

Before the interview, we each contributed a small amount of money that we put towards buying Antonia a small 'gift basket' filled with various things as yet another way of saying thank you for her time.

The others in our group were each assigned roles including writing the article, translating the interview into English from German, putting together a video at the end or coming up with questions for the interviews. We hope to publish a transcript of the interview in the form of an article in the school newspaper in both English and German to further raise awareness.

As our project is so successful and each of our events is only growing is size and importance, we have come up with such more ideas. Our future plans include:

1. A charity run that will take place in August/September. Hopefully, we will all manage to attend the run and raise awareness
2. Organise more waffle sales to raise some more money towards the organisation, especially now that we have seen first-hand how vital this is for the lives of people like Antonia