When a close friend of Sacred Heart College Year 10 student Olivia Smith was admitted to hospital, his mental health suffered.
With limited access for his family and friends to visit due to COVID restrictions during his stay, Olivia saw first hand how difficult it was.
Sacred Heart College students are encouraged to undertake the ‘Year 10 Mercy Leadership Certificate.’ The idea of the certificate is to create an initiative which relates to community service and the acts of giving back, supporting, and engaging with others in the community.
With her friend’s situation and the requirements of the certificate, Olivia decided to create activity packs to cheer up children in University Hospital Geelong.
Olivia asked for donations from various businesses and companies and initially had a goal to create 20 packs. She ended up putting together 60.
“The bags contained many items that children in the hospital would be excited to receive including, pencils and textas, colouring pages, football posters, books, heat packs, baby feeding spoons, stationary, teddies and sensory toys,” Olivia said.
“With so many additional bags created, I was able to reach out and assist many more patients in the ward. “The Mercy Leadership Certificate allowed me to fully understand the impact one person can create on a community.”
The feedback from patients was overwhelming.
“After recently dropping off my bags to the children’s ward manager, I was delighted to receive some positive feedback from the hospital, illustrating how special the act of giving back to the community is,” Olivia said.
“Something that really stood out to me was a message from a young patient who received one of my bags who said that his favourite item was the ‘Worry Stone’ with special powers to stop any worries.
“By hearing this positive response, I knew that I had achieved my initial goal of being able to put a smile on children’s faces and helping to better their situation as much as I could.”
