Robin Williams' Family Establishes Charity Fund To Aid Disabled Athletes

Robin Williams' family is setting up a charity fund in the late actor's name to continue his longtime support of athletes with disabilities.

The beloved funnyman's daughter, actress Zelda Williams, reveals she and her two brothers have made it their mission to carry on the Good Will Hunting star's legacy as a philanthropist, and she will make an appearance at the Noble Awards on Friday (27Feb15) to present a prize honouring the Oscar winner and his teammates who regularly participated in the Challenged Athletes Foundation's annual San Diego Triathlon Challenge.

The non-profit organisation provides prosthetics to disabled athletes and during the Los Angeles ceremony, Zelda will hand over a $50,000 (£31,250) donation to bosses at the Challenged Athletes Foundation, which will benefit the newly-established Robin Williams Fund.

Zelda discussed her involvement in her dad's favourite charity during an interview with U.S. breakfast show Today, her first Tv chat since his death, and she reveals she and her siblings have always been inspired by their late father's kindness and generosity.

She recalls, "He's done charity as long as he had the wherewithal and the ability to do it. That was what his favorite thing other than comedy really was...

"He would meet guys there (at the San Diego Triathlon Challenge) that were not participating that had just lost limbs and were just there, maybe a family friend brought them, because they were depressed or because they needed to witness something remarkable and he would go and talk to them and he would be like, 'Next year, I want you to do this, bud.'"

Williams was a recovering alcoholic who had been battling depression, anxiety and the early stages of Parkinson's disease at the time of his August (14) suicide, and Zelda wants to turn her dad's struggles into a positive for others by encouraging the open discussion of mental health problems to remove the stigma which has prevented others from going public with their experiences for decades.

She says, "I think one of the things that is changing, that is wonderful, is that people are finally starting to approach talking about illnesses that people can't really see. Nothing happens immediately, but I think we're on our way."

Discussing her father's personal issues, she continues, "He talked about his alcoholism... he joked about it, because you're supposed to (talk about it)...

"If you have things that make you sad, I do take from him that you should turn them into things that you can at least express to other people or in his case, he would make jokes about it because it helped him not hide it. I think it was important to him for people to talk about important things. It meant a lot to him. He didn't like people feeling like the things that were hard for them, (that) they should go through alone.

"I think that's the big legacy for him, and for me and for my brothers, is that he somehow had an enormous number of people in this world who felt that he made them feel a little less alone."