In October last year Ruby was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer. In order to make a full recovery she needs a stem cell donation and currently there is no match for her on the international register. A match for Ruby is likely to be of Latin-American heritage, and currently there is a massive shortage of people registered from all ethnic minorities.

A group of family and friends have recently started a campaign to try and raise as much awareness as possible about this disparity, in order to help Ruby in the first instance, and also to highlight the wider issue of the lack of diversity on the international stem cell register.

We have used social media to highlight Ruby's appeal, have attracted the interest of the news media, with radio interviews, TV coverage and newspaper articles. We have run a number of stem cell donor registration events in London in areas with high Latino populations and have managed to add thousands of new people to the stem cell donor registries in person and online and across ALL ethnicities.

We've achieved a lot but we have lots more to do, and we need to do it quickly so we have decided to try and raise some money to help fund larger scale events and register more potential donors.

Everyone involved has offered their time and resources voluntarily and we will continue to do this but as a matter of urgency we also need to raise money to help support Ruby and her very young family in this incredible time of need. As any of you who have experienced anything like this will know, there are huge financial implications when someone is critically ill.

We would like to take these financial stresses away from Ruby and her husband Sam, so that they are free to enjoy their time together and most importantly free to focus on Ruby getting well again.

Please help support our urgent campaign to help this family in their desperate time of need, by giving what you can.