MAKE A WISH LAUNCHES NEW APP TO HELP CRITICALLY ILL KIDS BECOME "WISH EXPLORERS"
Make-A-Wish Australia has launched its ‘MyWish’ app – an immersive technology platform designed to help critically ill children better understand their emotions and strengths, spark imagination and creativity and support critically ill wish kids on their Wish Journeys.
Children use the MyWish App to explore, experiment and engage with their wish ideas.
Content on the platform deepens engagement across the entire Wish Journey which may span multiple years and involves a child thinking about, designing, anticipating, and realising their wish.
The MyWish app introduces evidence-based, positive psychology principles through innovative and joyous experiences to support kids throughout their Make-A-Wish experience and beyond.
The MyWish app encourages wish kids to imagine the fullest possibilities of their wish through content and engagement with much-loved Walt Disney Company characters.
These include Moana, Iron Man, Elsa, Wall-E, Mickey and friends – each strongly reflecting and associated with specific qualities and character strengths of individuals.
The Walt Disney Company, along with a leading Australian psychologist Professor Lea Waters and globally recognised digital agency Two Moos/DEPT (the family division of Two Bulls/DEPT), supported the platform’s development.
Within the MyWish app, children become ‘space explorers’ who embark on new adventures and complete pre-wish missions that help them to dream up and capture ideas for their wish.
The wish child’s mission is to boldly navigate through time and space, exploring their own creativity, strengths, and emotions along the way.
Sally Bateman, CEO of Make-A-Wish Australia, said the MyWish app demonstrated Make-A-Wish’s unwavering commitment to designing amazing experiences for the wish kids on their journey.
“By bringing together some of the world’s leading thinkers in creativity and imagination, positive psychology, and digital experiences, we have created something incredibly special for the critically ill wish children we are privileged to support," she said.
“The MyWish app is fun and immersive, allowing the younger kids in our program the freedom to explore a world of possibilities as they begin to imagine their wish, whilst recognising their own unique strengths along the way.”
Professor Lea Waters, who guided the positive psychology principles in the MyWish app, said that these played a critical role in helping kids understand and deal with the full range of emotions they experience on their Wish Journey while fostering creativity and building their resilience and confidence.
“The strength-based science shows us that introducing positive psychology into the MyWish app is going to have a host of positive benefits for kids, including increasing their well-being literacy, increasing their sense of confidence and increasing their sense of strengths awareness.
“This all translates into helping kids know that they have strengths that can guide them through their Wish Journey, their medical journey and life more generally,” Professor Waters said.
The MyWish app was supported with assistance from Disney and tap sinto the organisation’s expertise in creativity, imagination and storytelling, along with leveraging the magic of more than 40 of Disney’s beloved characters.
The Disney characters play an important role in reinforcing the strength-based science integrated within the MyWish app. To help kids better identify and understand their own superhero powers, their personal strengths are associated with Disney characters that best reflect these qualities.
MyWish app is available in Australia on iOS and Android and has started being rolled out to Make-A Wish families with younger children on a Wish Journey.
Make-A-Wish Australia: https://www.makeawish.org.au/about-us