You'd be Amazed

We asked a couple groups why they participate in Cardz for Kidz!. The majority of respondents highlighted how fun it was or how much they loved seeing the impact we had on disheartened children.

There were some people who are invited to hand deliver their cards during the Cardz WITH Kidz event at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s hospital in Chicago. The honor usually goes to the top artists and/or vital contributors who get to hand deliver their cards to children in the PLAYROOM at Lurie. Here’s a potential quote that we’ll say during our next event!

“Hi all, we need your help! This past quarter we received a total of 1,841 CARDS and here are the OVERALL TOP 10. We set it up so people vote for the Top 10, but we feel you are experts, so we want you to pick your ULTIMATE favorite.”

The children get excited, look through the cards and they pick their favorites. Then, we tell them since they’re V.I.P. (Very Important Patient/Person) they get to keep the card! Now that’s the tough part! J  It’s hard to tell who’s more excited - the kid who gets to keep the card or the artist who just had his/her card selected. Either way we get to take a picture of the two of them together.

One thing we strive is to make Cardz for Kidz! as easy as possible for everyone besides us. That means we make sure that the hospitals don’t have to send us pictures of them delivering the pictures since that’d require a lot of paperwork on their end. Therefore, all the pics you see of kids holding cards are kids from the Playroom at Lurie or C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In addition, we don’t charge people who are making cards anything to participate. In our dream world all the groups would select and mark the Top 10 cards from their event, but we don’t push it!

Since some of the “staff” at Cardz for Kidz! volunteer and hand deliver the cards, we get to see some of the direct expressions of kids who receive the cards in their rooms. Those patients are often the most disheartened. Some of them are in their rooms alone and others simply aren’t able to leave their rooms. With that in place, those patients are SO excited!

In our ideal world, we’d be able to invite the top artists each quarter to go “bedside” (visit patients’ rooms) with us. While we were meeting up, they’d get to decide which floor they’d like their card to go to (e.g. Cancer, Neurology, PICU, etc.). Then we’d watch them hand their card to a child. We wish. Unfortunately, hospitals are very stringent on what visitors can do – patient safety is NUMBER ONE. So, as you saw above, although artists can’t go bedside, they do get to directly interact with patients. Yet, even the artists who attend don’t know the full extent their group has made on children.

So, during your next event please remember- you’re having fun making the cards and may even be feeling competitive to make the Top 10, but YOU’D BE AMAZED if you knew the impact you’re having on patients confined to their beds. Thanks for making a difference in their lives!!!!

#YoudBeAmazed #UpliftingSpirits

To see more pictures and stories check out our website, www.cardzforkidz.org, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, visit our Google+ page, or visit our LinkedIn page! Also, check out some of our videos on YouTube!