Let me introduce myself first, I am Steve, Dad to Charlie of 3 ½ years old, I live and breathe for my son whom has brought me much happiness and sadly a lot of sorrow too but life wouldn’t be life without him. Charlie’s fight and the fight of all babies to survive CHD has made me realise that life is very delicate and that they need our help to survive, this is my drive to raise as much money as possible for GOSH and to see more parents leave hospital with their babies.

The Charlie Wood heart appeal was set up in early May 2007 after my son underwent 4 major open heart operations at Great Ormond Street Hospital, he was born in December 06 with severe heart disease and if it wasn’t for the expertise of the surgeons and doctors, Charlie would not be with us today.

In May 2007 we began to organise a charity night at Uplands community centre in Lowestoft in aid of GOSH, on the 23rd October 2007 the night finally arrived and after a lot of hard work by ourselves, our family, the generous companies who sponsored us & donated items to our raffle & auction, and to over 200 people who came to the event, we raised over £9,691! We had Sarah and Lloyd do a sponsored parachute jump and Darren Hambley run the London marathon for the appeal. There were hundreds of prizes up for grabs in the raffle along with some great auction items such as a signed Lewis Hamilton photo and football memorabilia with c.o.a. ALL of the money was donated to GOSH, namely the cardiac wards with a huge thank you for saving our son’s life.

This appeal, although it is named  the “Charlie Wood Heart Appeal”, is not in any way just about Charlie it is about ALL babies that are born with heart disease, it is to help raise funds for GOSHCC to help  them maintain and remain proactive in their fight against congenital heart disease (CHD).

This information has been prepared in the hope of attracting sponsors and donations for an upcoming charity event we are now beginning to start organising ready for August 2010.

Our Aim, the “Charlie Wood Heart Appeal”.Our aim through this appeal is obvious, to raise as much money as we can to help babies with heart conditions and to do that we need to raise money for GOSH.

You would think that no child at GOSH will go without surgery, this isn’t always the case, although the consultants, doctors and surgeons will do everything in their power to increase survival, there isn’t always the expertise or equipment or the “know how” to perform the operation, this is where our much needed fund raising is vital. All our fundraising is for the cardiac wing and the cardiac intensive care unit at GOSH.

Whilst at GOSH we got to know a few parents, sadly not all the parents went home with their children, they died because their heart problems were too complicated to “fix” or there wasn’t the “know how” to “fix”, we have been lucky so far but we could have and still can like many parents, leave GOSH without Charlie Our real aim is to help provide vital money so that more children make it home with their parents, to have a better survival rate and a longer life span, to allow the “know how” to be developed to “fix” complicated hearts. The only way we can help make this happen is to rely on companies like your selves to support us in our charity event in any way possible.