Angelic Endeavors

Four-year-old ISLA, like many other children her age, loves the water and baking – unique to her, though, is her obsession with buttercream. She only wants to watch baking videos about that frosting. Isla is also unique in that she has fought harder than many her age ever should have to; she was diagnosed with medulloblastoma.

With the brain cancer, Isla became nonverbal, threw tantrums, and was incapable of being her climbing-daredevil-full-of-smiles self because her life was full of challenges. One obstacle was potentially tripping on the uneven floors in her Wilmington house her parents were unable to complete because of medical trips. Welcome Home Angel changed all of that.

Welcome Home Angel is a nonprofit organization founded in Wilmington – but expanding as far as Chicago and hoping to go farther – that focuses on children ages four to twenty-one with debilitating illness or injury. Welcome Home Angel provides living space makeovers to these children. In 2007, JOHN KAISER dreamed up Welcome Home Angel after his heart went out to neighborhood children who suffered illness and injury. Over seventy-five children and their families have been helped by the organization. Its mission is to help “families be families.”

Welcome Home Angel’s CEO, CRAIG WARNER, said 2024 was a banner year for helping a number of families, including Isla’s. Isla is a member of one of the dozen families (over thirty individuals) that Welcome Home Angel has helped in 2024. Warner says this is more than they have ever helped in a year. Welcome Home Angel is, “on track to serving (their) 80th family this year,” he says.

The renovations can range from helping to improve safety conditions in the home – such as flooring – adding sparkle to a sibling’s room so that everyone is reminded they are loved, or helping parents like Isla’s mother have a workspace where they can watch children and complete tasks. 

Every project varies in size of team and length of time to complete. Some only need one or two volunteers with help from the project manager, or, in the case of partnering with Cape Fear Community College’s Interior Design Program, it can be about twenty-five people. In Isla’s case, the makeover prep was all done in one day, but the actual progression took more time. The projects can take six weeks or six months, eight weeks or eight months.

Anyone can apply for a child to have a room makeover, whether a child’s parent, case manager, or someone else. The family is then sent a form to complete, and the screening process begins. Welcome Home Angel receives a lot of applications and has a waitlist.

“Due to the unprecedented number of requests for assistance, we are having to triage applications based on need, any safety, or urgent concerns in the home, and available resources, while also implementing a sliding fee scale based on a family’s resources,” Warner says. “From there, a projects committee with volunteer therapists, case managers, and designers review the applications and determine who and potentially when we’ll be available to provide assistance.”

The volunteer design team helps to make a personal impact. One of the women on Isla’s all-female design team made princess art specifically for Isla. GINNA BROWN, Isla’s design team lead, expresses how rewarding it is to help ease the struggles of others, and how much fun it can be to simply help little girls and get her “girly fix” through design. In February, the designers finished painting pearlescent flowers on Isla’s bedroom ceiling that encouraged her to look up; a skill she needed to practice. 

FISHER, Isla’s older sister, also had a mermaid-themed makeover in her bedroom.

“Helping people make life easier when they face so many other daily challenges is so rewarding,” Brown says. “Seeing their face when they walk (in to) see the transformation is priceless. To be able to offer joy in hard times is the best part!”

The rewards for helping a child in need are exponential, as is noted by Isla’s mother, LINDSEY WOOD, notes that “everybody, teachers, family, her therapist, noticed a huge difference … she started talking a lot more.”

Welcome Home Angel is supported by a volunteer team and donations.

“With major renovations for accessible bathrooms costing upwards of $30,000 … we simply cannot do this without the community’s support,” Warner says. “From attending fundraisers, setting up monthly donations via our Angel Ambassador program, or providing pro bono services and in-kind materials, there’s multiple ways people can get involved to transform lives and ‘help families be families.’”

To view more of photographer Madeline Gray’s work, go to madelinegrayphoto.com.

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