Touching True-life
I help people forge new friendships in a very special way...
Sharron Wilkinson, 52, from Huddersfield
Peeling open the envelope, I eagerly unfolded the mystery letter inside.
Scrawled in elegant handwriting, the letter detailed how the writer’s day had been and even divulged a little about their hobbies.
There was a watercolour painting of a natural landscape inside, too.
I wonder what this person looks like.
From a stranger’s handwriting, I could always sense their individual personalities.
After reading letters from volunteer writers across the UK, they all had one trait in common. Kindness.
Watching the news in March 2020, when the pandemic hit, reports that care homes weren’t accepting visitors played on TV.
While I didn’t have any relatives living in a care home, I was heartbroken that so many elderly people were unable to see their friends and family.
What will happen to them? A lot of them wouldn’t be able to use technology to keep in touch. Only, the perfect idea hit me. Throughout my life, I’d stayed in touch with my friends through writing letters.
Letter writing is the perfect way to keep people connected, I suddenly realised.
At the time, I worked full-time as a manager at a charity, so I branched out to the local community to kickstart my new project.
And within a few days, I was receiving messages from locals keen to pen letters to those isolated in care homes.
So, Give… A Few Words was born in early 2020.
Liaising with local care homes, I matched the volunteers with their pen pal based on their shared interests.
As the letters came in, I checked them myself before they were sent out to the recipients.
And I was delighted to find they were all written with so much passion and enthusiasm.
Some of them were even three pages long, enclosed with knitted creations, paintings and drawings as l
