Taylum's progress basis for new SickKids campaign

Shortly after two-year-old Taylum Lamoureux returned home to Chelmsford, after spending most of his life in Toronto's Ronald McDonald House with his mom Desirée, a film crew with the SickKids Foundation caught up with his story.

Taylum received a kidney transplant on May 13, 2015, after spending most days of his young life on dialysis, due to the polycistic kidney disease that caused both his kidneys to fail only days after he was born.

Taylum captured the hearts of people in Sudbury, and around the province, when he was featured in commercials last December to help raise funds for the SickKids Foundation.

That campaign, which featured 45 children who had received care at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, became the foundation's most successful initiative to date.

The SickKids Foundation managed to raise $37 million in December 2014.

“In terms of general donations it was our single biggest giving month in the history of the foundation,” said Lori Davison, the foundation's vice-president of brand strategy and communications.

Those funds help support research, care and education at Canada's largest children's hospital.

“We have 2,000 researchers working on the biggest challenges in child health and we need philanthropy to accomplish things,” Davison said.

With the foundation's latest campaign, it has decided to follow up with six children from the last year's campaign, including Taylum.

“People are really interested in following up on how these kids are doing. So that became the premise of this campaign,” Davison said.

Each of the six children have successfully returned home, where they have been able to resume their lives and be kids.

But the videos tied to the campaign – and there are four so far – have a special twist.

When you visit the website you can watch the first half of each child's story, but to see the update on their current progress, you will need to donate to the campaign.

Once a certain number of people donate to each video, that story is unlocked for everyone.

On Taylum's page, for example, it says he has undergone 602 dialysis treatments in his young life. For his video to be unlocked for the masses, 602 people need to donate any amount of money to the SickKids Foundation.

As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, the video needed 580 more donors to be unlocked.

Those donations will help children like Taylum, from across Ontario, and Canada, that receive care at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children every day.