Ronald McDonald House Lund
The Ronald McDonald house in Lund functions as a home away from home and offer an environment for recovery and relief in the often tough situation a family is in when their child suffers from a severe illness. Our house gives the whole family an opportunity to be close and together. This helps the sick child to recover and it builds better mental health within the family.
The Ronald McDonald Child Foundation has operated in Sweden since 1990, and is an independent non-profit foundation. The foundation was founded by the Lederhausen family. Paul Lederhausen is the entrepreneur who took McDonald’s to Sweden and Paul and Irene Lederhausen’s daughter Erica suffered from cystic fibrosis and died tragically in 1976. The family’s experience from Erica’s illness laid the foundation for the Ronald McDonald Children’s Foundation which purpose is to support families with children who suffer from a severe illness by building Ronald McDonald’s Houses. The houses are supposed to feel like a home, where the whole family can be together, within walking distance to the hospital.
Since we opened our first house in Huddinge in 1993, almost 200,000 family members have lived a part of their life in our houses. Every year, the houses are a home away from home for more than 3,200 families. Today we have five houses next to the University Hospitals in Gothenburg, Huddinge, Linköping, Lund and Uppsala. In the Houses, the families live together with others who are in a similar situation, which means that they have the opportunity to talk and get support from each other. For the children and siblings, everyday life in the houses is a way to clear their thoughts and live a slightly more normal life.
The house in Lund was built in 2003 and currently has 27 rooms. The occupancy is high, which means that as soon as a room becomes vacant, a new family moves in.
In order to provide our families with a harmonious environment that also encourages movement and offers the opportunity to spend time outdoors, we have for a long time wanted to build a better outdoor environment; our own playground. With support from H.M. Queen Silvia’s Foundation CATCH, this dream was made possible in 2017.
The project has given us and our families a peaceful and harmonious place where they can always find joy and can spend time together. Perhaps it is even more important today than before that we make our outdoor environment more interesting, so that our families can have the opportunity to relax in the fresh air.