EZ Living Furniture fundraising appeal for child cancer charity in Tanzania

EZ Living Furniture have just launched a major online and in-store fundraising campaign for an amazing charity in Tanzania that works with children battling a cancer diagnosis.

As part of the campaign, EZ Living Furniture stores are selling hand-made masks for €4 in each of their stores nationwide, including in their Tullamore branch at the Retail Park in Cloncollig, and they are also asking their customers to donate as little as the price of a cup of coffee to help treat the children of Tanzania.

EZ Living Furniture became involved in the campaign to raise funds for cancer treatment in Tanzanian children as far back as 2019 when the founders of the furniture company, the Dilleen family, met Dr. Trish Scanlan, and were amazed and inspired by her story.

In 2006, as part of her Master’s Degree in International Health, Dr. Trish travelled to Tanzania to learn how children’s cancer was being treated in other parts of the world. There she was confronted with a heart-breaking and bleak reality. A chronic shortage of resources and drugs, coupled with having only one doctor (the wonderful Dr. Jane Kaijage) and three nurses available meant that the survival rate for children presenting with cancer was less than 10%.

The following year, the inspirational Dr. Trish returned to Tanzania with one goal in mind – to improve and strengthen paediatric oncology services for the children of Tanzania. With that in mind she founded the Children’s Cancer Unit at Muhimbili National Hospital, which revolutionised cancer treatment for children to such an extent that survival rates have soared from just 10% to 60%.

Fifteen years on from the foundation of the Children’s Cancer Unit, over 750 children are availing of free treatment, but sadly, it is still only a fraction of the estimated 4,500 child cancer sufferers in Tanzania.

In 2011, a parents association called “Hope for Life” was set up in Tanzania to help and support the families of child cancer patients, and this is now an international NGO collective called “Their Lives Matter” or TLM. Dr. Trish Scanlan and TLM share a dream that every child in Tanzania who needs it, will receive the best cancer treatment possible, absolutely free and she has dedicated her life to this mission.

As soon as they became aware of the extraordinary work of Dr. Trish Scanlan in Tanzania, the Dilleen family felt compelled to contribute in any way they could to helping her. Using all of their connections and experience, the generous founders of the EZ Living Furniture company sent a container packed with comfortable new mattresses from the west coast of Ireland all the way to the east coast of Africa! After many hurdles and setbacks, the container finally arrived, providing much-needed comfort to the children cared for by TLM, and the Dilleen family have been giving ever since.

The TLM charity is very close to the hearts of the EZ Living Furniture family, who are always on the lookout for ways to help Dr. Trish, even to the extent of using the company warehouses as a base to send vital medical equipment from Ireland to Tanzania.

With funding for Dr. Trish and TLM being severely affected by Covid, EZ Living Furniture is appealing to customers to donate as little as the price of a cup of coffee to help treat the children of Tanzania, and they are also asking customers to consider buying the hand-made masks which are currently on sale in their stores for €4 each. The masks are made in a skills workshop by parents of children who are being treated for cancer by Dr. Trish Scanlan and TLM, and all proceeds from their sale goes to funding chemotherapy treatments, nutrition programmes and other services.

For further information, please visit EZ Living Furniture’s “Their Lives Matter” webpage now on: https://www.ezlivingfurniture.ie/ezliving-tlm