The Starship Foundation’s Children’s Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand has won the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for its mobile phone recycling campaign which is based on the model used by the Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation here in Ireland. Jonathan Irwin, CEO and Founder of Jack & Jill was instrumental in establishing this campaign in 2009 which is based on the Jack & Jill model of recycling and uses Jack & Jill’s Irish recycling partner Folamh.

New Zealanders donate their old mobiles, which are recycled through Folamh, to raise money specifically for the aircraft used by Starship Children’s Hospital to bring sick children to hospital, with over NZ $750,000 raised already.

Jack & Jill has also been involved in establishing a similar project with the Sony Foundation in Australia this year which raised AUS $500,000 for its chosen charity Canteen which supports teenagers with cancer in the first 4 months of operation.

The Jack & Jill Children’s Foundation www.jackandjill.ie was set up in 1997 by Jonathan Irwin and his wife MaryAnn O’Brien (MD of Lily O’Brien’s) to help young children in Ireland who are born with or develop brain damage and who suffer severe intellectual and physical developmental delay as a result. They decided to set up Jack & Jill based on their own experience with their son Jack whose short life showed them the ideal way in which little children can be nursed at home. From their experience evolved the Jack & Jill model of home nursing and respite care that currently supports 320 families in Ireland and has helped over 1,200 children and their families since 1997. Jack & Jill’s service includes home visits, advice, information, funding, lobbying and bereavement support and it requires an annual budget of almost €3 million, most of which comes from mobile phone recycling and public donations with only 19% coming from the State.