Surprise letters cheer isolated seniors
Group reaches out to seniors shut in during pandemic
Opening a friendly letter you unexpectedly received by post used to be one of life's simple joys, back when snail-mail was a thing, especially at this time of year with the holidays approaching.
A group of five young adults has revived the tradition during COVID-19 to try to alleviate some of the loneliness felt by Metro Vancouver seniors who have been shut in and hard hit by the global pandemic.
Because many seniors' homes have had to stop allowing family or volunteers in to centres to socialize with residents, the group — known collectively as Letters For Better Days — came up with the idea of sending letters of encouragement to seniors in the community, in hopes of bringing them joy this season.
Megan Sadler and four other young women came up with the idea this summer.
“We wanted a project that would benefit the community in some way, it was very open-ended,” Sadler said over the phone from her home office near Commercial Drive.
“We got to talking about how, obviously, the pandemic has impacted everybody across the board in so many different ways.
“Loneliness is such a big, big thing so many of us were feeling, but we sort of called attention to the fact it's easier for people in our generation to just kind of FaceTime or text or whatever, whereas our senior friends don't necessarily have that luxury and so the loneliness is definitely hitting them hard.
“We wanted to do something for them and so we launched this letter-writing campaign.”
The group met (virtually, they meet regularly on Zoom but have yet to meet each other in person) through SUCCESS Foundation, a charity that raises money for programs and services that aren't fully funded by governments, and which runs a youth leadership program.
The response has flooded in from around the globe, despite being largely a word-of-mouth campaign through personal social media accounts.
Neil Gaiman, an English author (the novel Coraline, The Sandman comic book series), got wind of the project and tweeted it out, which brought in responses from as far as Dubai and Ireland. One of the young women in the group has family in Vietnam and word spread in that Southeast Asian country.
The project, begun in August, was originally supposed to wind down in late September, but letters kept coming so the group has extended the initiative. There was a Halloween version, and now the program runs to Dec. 18 for the holiday season.
Letters come into the group digitally, they get printed, and the agencies the group work with such as meal delivery or other service providers deliver the correspondences.
“The letters we've been getting have been really beautiful,” Sadler said. “It's amazing, the compassion and the hope that people have poured into these notes.”
Most recently, students at Cameron Elementary in Burnaby wrote letters, complete with cute drawing to melt the heart, Sadler said.
“When we began this, we had hoped for 100 letters,” Sadler said.
She is not sure how many notes have poured in, but it long ago smashed the 100-letter mark.
“We probably got at least 200, and for the holiday period we've already received about 70 letters. But the more the merrier, I'd love to smash that number out of the water, as well.”
You can send your own letter to lettersforbetterdays@gmail.com.