About Levi’s Star

We are a small hardworking charity with a big heart, dedicated to supporting children and young people diagnosed with a brain tumour. Since becoming a registered charity in 2008, we have worked tirelessly to raise funds for children with brain tumours and to raise awareness of this devastating illness.

Did you know that brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of children and young adults in the UK? Yet they receive only 1.5% of the national spend on cancer research.

I didn’t either until the day my precious little boy was diagnosed with one. Levi was just six years old when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour on his brain stem and cerebellum. He had been suffering from headaches and dizziness which doctors assured me was due to childhood migraine. How I wish they had been right. Levi wasn’t responding to ‘migraine’ medicine and so we pushed for Levi to have a CT scan – after all how can doctors know what’s happening in someone’s head without looking? I wanted the scan to rule out anything serious …but it did the opposite. Levi was rushed to hospital and endured a 12 hour operation to de bulk his brain tumour. My brave little boy with the big brown eyes, beautiful smile and cheeky personality lost his Power Ranger fight and died in my arms just 6 weeks after diagnosis. He was surrounded by his devastated family.

We had lost Levi and now we were lost, our hearts were shattered into a million pieces. How do you even breathe without the little person who means more to you than your own life?

I believe that losing a child is the worst possible thing that could happen to a parent. It isn’t something you ‘get over’, ‘come to terms with’ or will ever be able to think about without your heart shattering into a million pieces over and over again. But it is something we have learned to live with. This is a choice we made and this choice to try and find hope has taken us on the most challenging journey we could have ever imagined.

One of the ways we have journeyed that path is by setting up a charity in Levi’s precious memory, to fight against the devastation brain tumours cause. Levi’s Star supports children/young people with brain tumours and their families at a time when their world has been turned upside down by the words no parent ever wants to hear ”your child has a brain tumour”.

We support children with brain tumours across Yorkshire in a variety of ways. For every child we help, we feel we are gaining a little piece of justice for Levi, ensuring Levi’s sad, sad story is a catalyst for change. We are also aware that we are meeting very real needs within the brain tumour community.

Our objectives are to

• Offer grants to children with brain tumours in the Yorkshire area
• Raise awareness about this devastating disease
• Promote research into centres for cures of brain tumours & research into survivorship programmes
• Offer support to children/young adults living with the effects of a brain tumour during and after treatment