SickKids Needs You Right Now

Rahaf Al Ahmadi is ten years old. Her favourite colour is purple. She loves playing with slime, she misses her school friends, and she’s been passing the time in her hospital bed drawing pictures of flowers and trees.

She’s also running out of time.

Rahaf lies in a hospital bed at SickKids with tubes taped across her face in the shape of little hearts. She has Progressive Familial Intrahepatic Cholestasis Type 3, a rare liver disease. Without a liver transplant, she won’t survive. Her family has already lost one daughter to the same condition. Eight-year-old Shahad died from liver failure back in Syria, where bombs in the streets of Aleppo made it impossible to even get her to a hospital.

The family fled to Turkey, then to Canada as refugees, hoping for a new start. For a while, Rahaf’s condition was manageable with medication. Then early this year, she got worse.

“I have hope in Allah and the people of Canada to come and help,” her father Sadek told the Toronto Star. “If I could give her a part of my body, I would not hesitate to do so.”

He can’t. Neither can anyone else in the family. They aren’t donor matches. So now they’re turning to strangers, hoping someone with type-O blood will step forward.

That’s what SickKids is. It’s the place where families come when they have nowhere else to go. When the medicine isn’t working, when the diagnosis is rare, when a child’s life depends on things that most hospitals can’t provide. Newsweek ranked SickKids the number one children’s hospital in the world for 2026, and stories like Rahaf’s show you why that matters.

What SickKids Is Working On Right Now

The hospital’s biggest push is an initiative called Precision Child Health, which is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of treating every child the same way, the medical teams are building care plans tailored to each patient’s genetics, biology, and environment. For kids with rare diseases like Rahaf’s, that precision can be the difference between a diagnosis that takes years and one that takes weeks.

The SickKids Foundation is currently running a monthly donor campaign around a young patient named William. “Their future is our fight” is the message. Monthly donations give the hospital a predictable funding base for research and daily care that runs around the clock, every day of the year.

This city has shown up for SickKids time and again. Earlier in June, the foundation hosted its 25th annual Scrubs in Our City fundraiser gala at Evergreen Brick Works. Twenty-five years of Torontonians putting on their best for these kids.

And Phil Kessel, after winning the Stanley Cup a couple of weeks ago, could have celebrated anywhere. He printed colour photos at Staples and went straight to SickKids. He’d promised the kids he’d bring them the Cup if he ever won it. He kept that promise.

We’ve Done Our Part. Now It’s Your Turn.

At Canada Energy Solution, we’ve been supporting SickKids through our donations for years now. This year we visited the hospital again to contribute in person, and what we saw reminded us why we keep coming back. The doctors, the nurses, the child life specialists, every single person in that building pours their heart into caring for children who aren’t their own. The patience they show, the gentleness, the way they can make a scared kid feel safe. We’re grateful for every one of them.

We’ve done our part, and we’ll keep doing it. But SickKids needs more than what one company can give.

What about you?

Here’s how you can help:

• Donate directly at sickkidsfoundation.com. One-time or monthly, every dollar goes toward research, treatment, and patient care
• Become a monthly donor. Even $20 a month makes a difference. You’ll get personalized updates on how your contribution is being used
• Play the SickKids Lottery. 1 in 2 odds of winning a prize. 1 in 1 odds of helping a child
• Follow the SickKids Foundation on Facebook for patient stories, event news, and ways to get involved. Sharing a post might reach the right person at the right time

Right now, Rahaf is lying in that bed drawing pictures of flowers. William is counting on monthly donors to fund the research that could change his life. Thousands of other children inside SickKids are waiting for the kind of help that only comes when people decide to show up.

These kids can’t wait. Neither should we.