Card carrying creators
Father’s Day greetings take on a COVID twist
Are you looking for a special Father’s Day card to illustrate the times we’re all going through right now? Or a card to honor the frontline workers risking their health for the community?
Lodi father and son duo Derek and Zakariyus Ford, 9, have created special Father’s Day cards reflecting life in coronavirus times.
“Knock, knock, who’s there? Nobody because we are quarantining,” reads one card.
Another one reads:
“A great dad like you is harder to find than ...,” with images of a mask, hand sanitizer and toilet paper below.
The Fords also wanted to honor essential workers. One cards depicts two masked first responders walking down a corridor, with rows of bowing super heroes lining the walls. The card reads: “You are the real heroes.”
The cards were born out of a school assignment Zakariyus had a few years ago centered around helping the community. For his project, Zakariyus made care packages for the homeless.
When then coronavirus hit, the youngster wondered how he could help. He loves to doodle and draw, his father said, and the fourth-grader came up with the idea of the greeting cards.
“I wanted to design some Father’s Day cards for a fundraiser,” Zakariyus explained. He and his dad created hahacards.net, where they sell the cards designed by Zakariyus. For every card sold this Father’s Day season, the proceeds go towards buying protection equipment for local frontline workers, and, if purchased in bulk, they match every dollar spent on equipment to an essential business of the customer’s wishes.
If a company buys a card in bulk for their employees, they can choose to have donated equipment go to their business, or donate the equipment to another business on their behalf, Derek explained.
“I understand this is a real a predicament to be in — you have a lot of employees being put in a tough situation to go back to work and risk their lives. They are not all firefighters or police officers or in the military, they’re just doing just doing day-today work, and it’s so important and so brave what they are doing,” Derek explained. “We want them to be honored, and doing it in a way where businesses can benefit also.”
The father and son also created a solidarity card, which people can buy to show that “we’re in this together, we’re fighting this together,” Derek said.
But most of all, they want to help honor and show appreciation for essential workers.
“Because frontline workers risk their lives for us,” Zakariyus said.