Wear Blue for Bobby Day 2026 will celebrate Bobby Colleran’s 18th birthday

This year’s Wear Blue for Bobby Day will be bigger than ever to celebrate more than a decade of saving lives and to mark what would have been Bobby Colleran’s 18^th birthday.

A special evening will be held in Liverpool town centre for family, friends and supporters of The Bobby Colleran Trust, the charity founded in his name to campaign for road safety and help those suffering from grief and mental health issues.

And there will be a more prolonged awareness campaign leading up to the day on March 13, with 18 planned projects across the city – one for each of the years.

For mum Joanne, it will be a difficult time:

“It’s a tough one – and if anything, it gets harder, not easier,” she admits. “He’s 18 – and he’s not here.

“Like always you go through the ‘what ifs’ and wondering what he would be like and what he would be doing.”

But she added:

“We can’t let him turn 18, such a milestone, and not celebrate. I want to make it special for him.

“Even though Bobby’s not here, everything we do is in his name, his memory, and so with that, he has achieved so much.

“He has helped so many people and saved lives and I, as his mum, am so proud of what he’s done and what he’s built.

“The charity has gone from strength to strength and I have so much passion for what we do. It’s grown because there is a passion behind it, and because it’s born out of love.”

Credit: The Bobby Colleran Trust Wear Blue for Bobby The Guide Liverpool — Credit: The Bobby Colleran Trust

Bobby Colleran was only six years old when he was killed in a road accident as he walked home from school in West Derby in October 2014.

Joanne and her family helped set up The Bobby Colleran Trust in 2015 to campaign for, and improve, road safety for school children.

Initially set up to increase safety with 20mph Bobby Zones outside schools and promote education within them, it’s gone on to establish child and family bereavement counselling from the Bobby Base set up in the grounds of his old school Blackmoor Park Infants, which has a garden and interactive cave in his memory.

It also offers mental health sessions and coping advice for children who are struggling.

Over recent years the Trust has created road safety activity packs, hand delivering them to every infant and junior school in Liverpool, Sefton, St Helens, and Knowsley, and it continues to support safety to prevent another tragedy, with videos, road signs and markers, and more.

Joanne said:

“If we can help one more person, or one family, that’s enough,” smiles Joanne. “The charity is helping to better lives and to save lives.

“This is what we do, and we are doing it so well. I’m proud to be able to say that.”

On Bobby’s birthday, Friday, March 13, Joanne and her family – including husband David, and other sons Harry, 19, and 15-year-old twins Georgie and Frankie – will visit the cemetery where Bobby is buried.

They will lay down floral tributes, among them 18 blue and white roses.

She said:

“It’s always hard on his birthday, but we always put flowers on his grave, and I can breathe a little more easily as soon as I’ve done that,”

“We may go out for lunch as a family, we’ll see.

“But all our thoughts are on Bobby.

“I miss him. We all miss him. And I think it gets harder as the years go on because there’s a realisation that things aren’t going to change.”

Although she laughed:

“One of the twins is really like him – and the others ask ‘would Bobby be a bit of a pain like him’? And I say, yeah, definitely.”

It’s a bittersweet time for Joanne.

As much as she hurts for her son – “I still feel him with me” – it’s his loss that spurs her on to do the incredible work she and the charity does.

She said:

“Kids deserve to have a life, and we’ll do anything so that no other family goes through what we have.”

In the week leading up to Bobby’s birthday, media boards across the city will raise awareness of who he was and what the charity is trying to do, and there will be special school assemblies and more.

Joanne is hoping more people than ever will Wear Blue for Bobby and donate and raise money to keep the going: “All our services are free, and so we need that help to keep doing what we do.

“People could just donate £1 and if everyone did that, it would raise a lot of money,” she says, (while adding typically ‘although I appreciate that everyone is struggling at the moment’).

“We’ll get the safety messages out there.”

A celebration in PINS Social Club will take place on Saturday, March 14, to say ‘Happy Birthday’ to a boy who’s left a legacy, and to thank those who have played a part in it.

Joanne added:

“It’s such a loss, but so much has been gained too,”

“I want to say thank you because Liverpool always stands together and that means so much.

“We have worked really hard, but we have been supported every step of the way. Liverpool just gives, gives, gives, so that we can do what we do for free and we are so grateful. We wouldn’t be here without it.

“Bobby’s 18^th birthday is a time to acknowledge that.

“I’d swap places with Bobby in a heartbeat – but I can’t, and so we steer on; sharing our lived, real experiences so that people will stop and listen … and lives can be saved.”