Make-A-Wish® Australia launches innovative new ‘MyWish’ app featuring iconic Disney characters to support sick kids on their Wish Journeys

Make-A-Wish® Australia has launched its ‘MyWish’ app – a new immersive technology platform designed to help wish children better understand their emotions and strengths, spark imagination and creativity, and comprehensively support and engage critically ill wish kids on their Wish Journeys.

Children use the MyWish App to explore, experiment, and engage with their wish ideas. Content on the platform deepens engagement across the entire Wish Journey which may span multiple years and involves a child thinking about, designing, anticipating, and realizing their wish.

The MyWish app introduces evidence-based, positive psychology principles through innovative and joyous experiences to support kids throughout their Make-A-Wish experience and beyond.

The MyWish app encourages wish kids to imagine the fullest possibilities of their wish through content and engagement with much-loved Walt Disney Company characters featured including Moana, Iron Man, Elsa, Wall-E, and Mickey and friends – each strongly reflecting and associated with specific qualities and character strengths of individuals.

The Walt Disney Company, along with a leading Australian psychologist Professor Lea Waters AM and globally recognized digital agency Two Moos/DEPT® (the family division of Two Bulls/DEPT®), supported the platform’s development.

Within the MyWish app, children become ‘space explorers’ who embark on new adventures and complete pre-wish missions that help them to dream up and capture ideas for their wish. The wish child’s mission is to boldly navigate through time and space, exploring their own creativity, strengths, and emotions along the way.

Sally Bateman, CEO of Make-A-Wish Australia, said the MyWish app was the first initiative from the Foundation’s Imagination Lab and demonstrated Make-A-Wish’s unwavering commitment to designing amazing experiences for the wish kids on their journey.

“By bringing together some of the world’s leading thinkers in creativity and imagination, positive psychology, and digital experiences, we have created something incredibly special for the critically ill wish children it’s our privilege to support. The MyWish app is fun and immersive, allowing the younger kids in our program the freedom to explore a world of possibilities as they begin to imagine their wish, whilst recognizing their own unique strengths along the way,” Ms. Bateman said.

Professor Waters AM, Ph.D., who guided the positive psychology principles, frameworks, and activities embedded in the MyWish app, said that these play a critical role in helping kids understand and deal with the full range of emotions they experience on their Wish Journey while fostering creativity and building their resilience and confidence.

“The strength-based science shows us that introducing positive psychology into the MyWish app is going to have a host of positive benefits for kids, including increasing their well-being literacy, increasing their sense of confidence, and increasing their sense of strengths awareness. This all translates into helping kids know that they have strengths that can guide them through their Wish Journey, their medical journey, and life more generally,” Professor Waters said.

The MyWish app was supported with assistance from Disney and taps into the organization’s expertise in creativity, imagination, and storytelling, along with leveraging the magic of more than 40 of Disney’s beloved characters.

The Disney characters play an important role in reinforcing the strength-based science integrated within the MyWish app. To help kids better identify and understand their own superhero powers, their personal strengths are associated with Disney characters that best reflect these qualities.

The Walt Disney Company Australia and New Zealand’s Senior Vice President and Managing Director, Kylie Watson-Wheeler, said: “The Walt Disney Company is a proud supporter of Make-A-Wish around the world. We’re thrilled our beloved Disney characters – from Moana to Mickey and friends – will inspire, deepen, and extend Wish Journeys in meaningful ways on the MyWish app.”

Two Moos/DEPT® are award-winning digital experts in refining what technology can do to educate and engage kids and played an integral role in the collaboration, developing the MyWish app with support on digital strategy, engineering, and creative.

Joey Egger, Two Moos/DEPT® Managing Director said, “Myself and our team at Two Moos/DEPT® have been admirers of Make-A-Wish Australia’s work for a while. Becoming their digital partner for the MyWish app has been a huge honor and indeed a big check on our best people to work with bucket list! As part of DEPT®, a certified B Corp, we’re super proud to support Make-A-Wish and the children on their Wish Journey in the most intuitive and delightful way.”

MyWish app is available in Australia on iOS and Android and has started being rolled out to Make-A-Wish families with younger children on a Wish Journey.

To learn more about Disney’s wish-granting work around the world, visit worldwish.org/Disney.