Children deserve to be children. This means that childhood should be spent playing and being carefree. This becomes especially pronounced during the Christmas season. Unfortunately, some of them are bound indoors.
That’s why a unique project was made to bring joy to a Colorado children’s hospital. This will be back again during winter and the best thing about it are that strangers can out of their way to “Say Hi with a Snowman”.
This initiative has been going on for three years now and for kids who are stuck in Children’s Hospital Colorado, they are able to sketch their version of ‘a perfect snowman’ and their artwork is then matched when volunteers come and actually build the snowmen and bring their imagination to life.
The 2023 campaign had just been opened for families who want to participate and this will continue until the end of March, which has been Colorado’s snowiest time.
Families are interested in joining can sign up online and they will be paired with a patient. Once they are done bringing the patient’s design to life, they can take photos or videos, submit these to the Children’s Colorado team, and then the team shares the output to the artists themselves.
The initiative was launched in 2021 by the Denver hospital. Their goal was to provide some happiness and laughter to their young patients when the pandemic hit. Since its beginning, around 200 families have built real-life snowmen and sent pictures. Along the pictures and videos were and letters of encouragement for the young ones.
The campaign’s publicity team spoke to GNN and said that they’ve never had submissions originate from outside of Colorado. However, if this reaches a global scale, things are likely to change for the better.
One of the biggest supporters for the campaign is Generation Wild. With them, they also made an effort to work with state lottery funding to reconnect kids with nature in order to get them to have more unsupervised playtime outdoors.
“Our goal at Generation Wild is to get Colorado kids and families outside more often,” said Jackie Miller. “This fun campaign not only encourages outdoor play for the whole family but sets the example that an act of kindness can go a long way.”
Aside from the kids, this also gives the hospital staff some boost during such a difficult time.
“We are thrilled to once again partner with Generation Wild to help make our patients smile and feel connected to support systems outside the hospital.”
“This simple act brightens a patient’s day and lowers the stress of being in the hospital, all while creating positive memories for families in the outdoors,” Miller also said.
Everyone is welcome to join in on the fun by searching social media feeds and making use of the hashtag #SayHiWithaSnowman.
Generation Wild was formed by Great Outdoors Colorado. This organization invests a part of the Colorado Lottery proceeds to help preserve and enhance the state’s parks, trails, wildlife, rivers, and open spaces. Because they have been approved by the voters in 1992, ‘GOCO’ has managed to fund more than 5,600 projects in urban and rural areas and in all 64 counties and without tax dollar support.
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