52 Lives

#457 Kerr

Request: Donations / Gifts / Kind Messages

This week, we’d like to help a 12 year old boy from Scotland called Kerr who needs a special wheelchair so he can play football.

When Kerr was 3, his parents noticed he was struggling to move around as easily as other children his age. After a lot of referrals and tests, they found out that Kerr has Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy – a progressive muscle wasting disease for which there is currently no cure.

His mum, Alyson, said: “Our life as we knew it changed completely, the realisation that the life we had always thought our son would have, would never happen for him and the enormity of what lay ahead was overwhelming.”

“As he was diagnosed so young, he has only ever really known life with the condition and takes it in his stride. He has been taking part in a clinical trial that for the last few years that involves weekly infusions and he has never complained once! He has a great network of friends and really enjoys as full a life as he can. However as he has gotten older, and become a full time wheelchair user, he is a lot more limited with what he is able to participate in.

"When he discovered powerchair football, he finally found a sport where he wasn’t the odd one out, where he can fully take part and actually be good at it and his confidence has soared”.

Kerr gets a huge amount of joy from powerchair football but to progress in the sport, he needs a proper football chair – which costs more than £10,000, quite a lot more than your average child's football boots!

Over the years, Kerr’s mum and dad have worked so hard to raise a huge amount for muscular dystrophy charities – Alyson even won an award for everything they’ve done to fund research into the disease. Now, we’d like to do some fundraising to help them make Kerr’s dream to play competitive football come true! It's a huge amount to raise, but anything we can put towards it would be a big help to their fundraising efforts.

As well as raising funds to help pay for the chair, we have also set up a small wishlist with a few gifts for Kerr and his big brother Aaron who is a great support to Kerr.

What We Need

1. Donations: We'll use 100% of your donations to contribute towards Kerr's football chair. You can donate online or by text message using the details below (please note the text message number sometimes changes, so please double check it below before making a donation).

2. Gifts from a wishlist: We've set up a small wishlist with some gifts for Kerr and his big brother. To buy something from the list, please click the link below and choose the gift you'd like to buy - just tick 'this is a gift' and choose the 'gift registry address' when you check out and it will be sent directly to the family.

3. Kind messages: To send a kind message for the family, you can post it to: 52 Lives (457), PO Box 3154, Reading, RG1 9AT or you can email a message by writing it in the form below.

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(if you are sending a message of support for the person we’re helping, there is no need to fill in your email address or telephone number)

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