15-year-old Maddie is navigating vital schooling years without the tools that her peers take for granted.

Maddie has grand plans. Despite a tough start to her education – problems at home meant she often had to skip school – she’s recently moved in with her grandmother and now has the stability she needs to focus on her studies. Eager not to waste any more time, Maddie has already been awarded a badge of academic achievement, is a prefect and represents her school in sport. But with more and more of her schoolwork moving online, she’s starting to struggle to keep up. Grandmother Amy is doing her best on her pension, but she can’t afford to buy digital devices for the three grandchildren that have unexpectedly fallen into her care. Her old desktop computer is fought over by the three teenagers from morning until night. All of them dream of making it to university one day, but that dream feels like a distant one when their friends at school can study at ease whilst they pull late nights and early mornings, stealing any moment that they can on the shared device to complete assignments on time.

“Support from Variety would help Maddie to dream big and stop her from falling behind,” says Amy. “It would open up Maddie’s world so much and help us as a family. She deserves the opportunity to be anything she wants to be.”