Words by Smiley Team
In the first lockdown, Sharron Wilkinson was working for a charity in Huddersfield – as she had been for the past 18 years. It was a charity supporting other charities in the area and recruiting volunteers. During this time, she was contacted by a care home who said their residents weren’t seeing anyone and were feeling isolated. They needed help.
“We came up with the idea of letter writing,” Sharron tells Smiley News. “We promoted it for the volunteers, popped it on the website, and the idea snowballed.”
It was the perfect time for people to write letters, during lockdown when the nation was advised to “stay home”. Within a few months, they’d got so many volunteers, they offered it out to other care homes, too. It got so big, that Sharron wasn’t able to continue working full-time while managing the letter-writing volunteer project.
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“But I couldn’t let it go,” she says. She set up the scheme as a community organisation, called Give… A Few Words. She managed to secure funding to set up a website for it, too. In February, she got some funding for 10 hours a week working, so she quit her job to work on it, because of how passionate she was about the project. She set it up as a social enterprise on 1 March, and away she went.
Sharron has had volunteers come to her from all over to write letters to care homes and others who are feeling isolated. After getting national coverage for the charity, demand increased. “It was so crazy,” she says. “We worked with care homes and then went on to work with different charities and community groups who were isolated.”
So, how does it work? The Give… A Few Words website matches up volunteers with people who are in need of letters through interests and hobbies. Sharron does the match-making, and always ensures they share first names only so nobody knows who the person is.
She’s been overwhelmed with the kindness some people have shown. Volunteers have written letters, drawn paintings, written poetry, done sketches, and even origami. “I open these envelopes that the volunteers have sent, and things just fall out,” says Sharron. “It makes me cry opening them. People go to so much effort. It really does show the best of people."
Sharron will collect all the envelopes and gather them so everyone in the care home gets at least two. Then she’ll ship them off to be distributed. If people want to send a thank you note back, they can, but they aren’t obliged to.
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The social enterprise is expanding, too. They’ve started running workshops for the volunteers with authors, to help people improve their writing, and they also worked with 50 students from the NCS to encourage young people – many of whom haven’t written a letter for years – to get involved. Sharron is passionate about the local community and bringing people together, so did a pop-up surprise positive display in a community in Huddersfield, sharing Give… A Few Words’ mission.
“You’ve always got people who need a bit of a lift,” she says, “so this will carry on, even after this pandemic.”
If you’re interested in volunteering and writing a letter to someone who is isolated and in need of a pick-me-up, sign up on the website. After you’ve signed up, you’ll be matched with someone to send a letter to, and you have the option to write or email.
