Hi. My name is Cooper Alexander McDermid and I live with my Mum and Dad in Perth, Australia. I was born on the 11th of August 2024. With Mum and Dad’s help I’m doing great although there could be some challenges ahead. So, I wondered if you could help me?

Unfortunately, I was born blind. I have something called Norrie Disease. It’s really rare with only some 500 cases in the world including about 50 in the UK. There are not many of us so it doesn’t get much attention. This makes it really hard to raise money for research. Luckily, the world-famous Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) does research into Norrie Disease and they share their findings with my doctor in Australia. GOSH works really closely with our special charity, the Norrie Disease Foundation (NDF). They have some great volunteers who are the mums and dads of people like me. They raise money each year to fund research into Norrie Disease, which has recently included pioneering, peer-reviewed research projects into Norrie-related hearing loss and a PhD studentship, both taking place at GOSH Institute for Child Health.

My family and I have started supporting the Foundation but we could really do with your help. You can help in a number of ways:

If you can join us on the afternoon of 23 April 2025 for golf at Effingham Golf Club, please complete the attached Entry Form. If you want to bring some guests that’s no problem. There are great prizes and some really brilliant things that you can bid for if you want to. You can even gift an item to be auctioned or raffled if you wish. More details on that soon. Just let me know if you can make the date by responding to this message by Friday 21 February.

Alternatively, if you can’t make 23 April 2025, but you wish to support the Norrie Disease Foundation (NDF) and GOSH, you can do so by donating directly to the Foundation through this page.

Thanks for listening.

Cooper (but you can call me by my Aussie name, Coops)