"I honestly don’t know where we would be without you."

At the end of each quarter, we’re always excited when three months of the Collective’s donations show up in the bank accounts of the charities you give to. When that happened last month, we got an email from the Chief Executive of UpsideDowns. It was too good not to share and is an amazing demonstration of the real-world impact your giving has on Kiwi lives.

“I’ve just blinked a few times and digested some of the numbers in your last email – just WOW. I can’t believe how this has grown and grown to become a real core part of what keeps our lights on. $25k last financial year is just incredible – especially when we had to cancel all our fundraising events while our waitlist grew at its fastest ever rate. I honestly don’t know where we would be without you.

We have a Board meeting tonight at which I am fairly confident we are going to take enough kids off our waitlist to reach 250. When we first became a One Percent Collective partner charity, there were less than half that number. That means around a third of the kids with Down syndrome in this country are now getting the Speech Language Therapy (SLT) they need through us. The future for people with Down syndrome looks completely different now than it did even five to ten years ago. The generational impact of that is pretty extraordinary.

I recently went to a play put on by the Glass Ceiling Collective starring five UpsideDowns alumni – all in speaking and singing roles! What I’m trying to say is that the voices of this incredible community are going to be heard loud and clear into the future, and One Percent Collective are such an enormous part of that.

Thank you so, so much for your vision, your commitment, and your faith in us.”

– Dr. Sarah Paterson-Hamlin, UpsideDowns Education Trust

Sarah’s email got us wondering how many children have been able to receive regular SLT thanks to the regular donations from One Percent Collective givers.

“In terms of getting kids off the waitlist it’s tricky to articulate but what One Percent Collective’s regular giving model allows us to do is have a more predictable idea of how much income we might have. That makes every waitlist discussion we have slightly easier.

Regularity and consistency of speech language therapy has been proven time and again to give kids with Down syndrome their best possible chance at speech and communication. Yet it remains something that neither the Ministry of Education nor the Ministry of Health can provide. UpsideDowns is the only way most Kiwi families can do that.

For a long time, One Percent Collective was our only regular, reliable income, and to a large extent that is still true. Each child with Down syndrome supported by UpsideDowns costs us about $1,000 a year and they continue receiving that support for an average of 5 years. Since 2016, One Percent donors have contributed over $90,000 to UpsideDowns. So, in a nutshell, there are 18 kids reaching high school now who can talk, read, write, and generally engage with the world thanks to One Percent Collective.”