At the ringing of the bell, room 238 floods with students. Eager participants find makeshift seats and fill their desks with colorful utensils. Students fill the inner folds of their carefully decorated cards with information about their day and their interests, knowing their letters are going towards a cause so much bigger than the stationary itself.
Founded in the spring of 2023 by current juniors Catherine Sperry, Eesha Gowda, Sahana Venkatraman, and Haasini Sriraman, Sending Sunshine is a new service-based club at WA that aims to bridge connections between high school students and senior citizens by making cards. Despite the group still being in its founding stages, it is the only Sending Sunshine chapter in the entire state of Massachusetts and continues to look for ways to expand its outreach.
“The whole point of the charity is to just spread kindness and show that you’re there for senior citizens,” Sriraman said. “Because they’ve gone through a lot, and now they’re in a place where they just need some love, and […] some potential friendship.”
WA’s Sending Sunshine chapter is derived from the original Sending Sunshine charity founded in 2020, based in Canada, and aimed at improving the lives of senior citizens. The organization recruits high school students to create heartfelt, decorative cards with connecting messages that are then sent to local senior centers to be distributed as a way to ‘send sunshine’ into their lives.
Sperry originally learned of the group through social media early in the past school year. After furthering her research on the organization’s work, she decided to make and send her own cards to see how the process would work and if it could be a possibility for students in Westford. After finding the process to be both successful and smooth-running, she found Sending Sunshine to be a perfect community service opportunity for WA.
Initially inquiring about the club’s founding to Dean Betsy Murphy, the four were redirected to math teacher Gilbert Fuhr who is responsible for organizing community service within the school. Because they aimed to establish a Sending Sunshine chapter that rewarded students with community service hours, the founding officers had a meeting with Fuhr to ensure club members could rightfully earn them.
“I was really impressed, because I think the need that they are filling is one that you have to be a very compassionate and caring person to even notice that need, and then to do something about it is special, and then to be willing to organize a whole club around it, that’s pretty special,” Fuhr said.
After solidifying Fuhr as an advisor for the group, the four began to plan their first meeting, scheduled for the end of the year. They worked together, spreading the word while also organizing a drop off location at a local senior center in Westford, Bridges.
“The cards that we make, we bring to Bridges and we hand out to the residents there. I’ve had connections with them in the past, and they’re just a reliable place to work with,” Sperry said. “So we have people that want the cards and say it’s a good opportunity for the residents there to build that connection with people.”
After their first meeting, officers were overwhelmed with attendance and a final total of 55 cards. Each card was then carefully reviewed by the officers to ensure that full effort and compassion was put inside so that each recipient receives a card that makes them feel valued.
“I feel like a lot of high schoolers have to deal with so much in their lives with school and grades and academics and all of that, and it’s hard to get time to just sit down and relax and do something for yourself and like someone else,” Gowda said. “So making these cards is a way to have fun, but also like, value somebody else’s life at the same time.”
After their success in the start-up of the club, Sending Sunshine continued to brainstorm ways to expand the organization and started off the year strong with their first meeting on Wednesday, September 8. Here, attendance was overflowing to the point where new chairs were brought in to accommodate. The club trumped their previous record with 56 cards at the end of the meeting.
“Older generations, they’ve gone through so much, and there’s so much we can learn from them. And I feel like in the midst of school, like everything, we kind of lose sight of that,” Sriraman said. “And it’s a great way to just connect with someone older than you, maybe share some important information and learn something new.”
The club had planned to also spend a week volunteering at Bridges, but due to a sudden Covid-19 outbreak, had to postpone. While they aim to reach this goal in the future, they have also redirected focus on the meetings themselves, creating themes for cards and a “Sunshine Board” to track the impact they have made so far.
“It’s kind of just so that they can build a connection with the younger generation, the way. […] It’s like ‘bridging generations’, but the idea is just to get the elderly to form connections with young high school students and people that they wouldn’t usually be connecting with,” Sperry said. “I feel like sometimes people just need that extra love, so we’re gonna be there for them.”
While WA’s Sending Sunshine chapter continues to evolve into a staple charity at WA, the founders urge students to stop in, even if just for a meeting, to make a major impact on senior citizens. Sending Sunshine meets monthly on Wednesdays in room 238 from 2 pm to 3 pm.
“I wish everybody at WA would come to at least a couple meetings and just participate and think about their own grandparents and their own families and what it means to stay in touch with them, and how important we are as young people to our grandparents,” Fuhr said. “And I think sometimes, if you don’t think about it, you miss that relationship.”
