Cure for two.

They have never stopped dreaming.

When Briona was born, we were told she had sickle cell disease. We had hoped, the way parents hope, that the worst of it might pass her by.

What we were not prepared for was September 2022. We woke up one morning and Briona was severely jaundiced. By the time we reached the hospital, we were told her heart had been affected by the severity of the anaemia. She was eleven years old.

She started complaining of pain in her hip. We thought it was a regular crisis. With this disease, you learn to absorb the pain and keep going. We kept waiting for it to pass.

What we didn't know yet was that it wouldn't.

Something changed over the following months that we could feel before we had words for it. Her gait changed. She couldn't walk long distances any more. I remember when she used to dance — she would split, just drop to the floor with joy. She stopped. By 2024, we finally had a name for what was happening: avascular necrosis. The blood supply to both her hips had been interrupted, and the bone was dying.

She had surgery on both hips in 2024. There was some relief, and we allowed ourselves to believe the worst was behind us. It wasn't.

By early 2025, the pain had returned with a force that hospitalised her for weeks. Her national exams — her BECE — were coming. She would not defer. We got permission from the zonal supervisor of the exam and created a makeshift clinic for her at the venue.

She passed.

By mid-2025 we arrived at the hardest decision we have made as her parents: a total hip replacement of the right hip. She was fourteen years old. Her surgeon told us she was the youngest patient ever to have that surgery at the hospital.

In October 2025, while Briona was in theatre, her younger sister Elena was in the same hospital having her own hip surgery. Because of what we had learned with Briona, we had caught Elena's condition early. We are grateful for that.

October 2025 is a month we will not forget.

That December, a consultant at the Federal Medical Centre in Abuja asked us: had we heard of Narayana Health in Bangalore? He introduced us to another family. The father called us that same evening — it was December 31st, 2025. His daughter had received a bone marrow transplant at Narayana. She is now studying medicine in the United States.

The joy in his voice. Moving from a father who had known years of hospitals and unpredictability, to a man who could say: my daughter is free.

For years, whenever a bone marrow transplant was mentioned, we had moved on. We had been told it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per child. It was a cure we had trained ourselves not to think about.

The cost at Narayana Health in Bangalore: $60,000 per child.

For the first time, the cure was within reach.

Asking people to help us raise this amount of money for our daughters is a big ask, and we do not take your trust lightly.

Kingsley and I know just how important integrity and trust are. We have been fortunate to build three different organisations where the core currency is trust — people trusting us with their children, their communities, their resources, and the responsibility to serve well.

That trust has been demonstrated through our work founding the KNOSK ₦100-a-Day Charity School, which currently serves 176 children from low-income families; through Kingsley’s three decades of work with Youngstars Foundation and his recognition as an Ashoka Fellow and member of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders community; and through my work building the Raising Girls community, supporting thousands of girls and families in Nigeria and beyond.

We understand that when you give to Cure for Two, you are extending that same trust to us. We want you to be able to see how your gift is being stewarded.

Our accountability has three layers

We know that giving is an act of trust. We intend to honour it.