Loyola’s Letters of Love Chapter Spreads Positivity to Children in Hospitals

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is a four-cornered piece of paper with a dinosaur reading, “You are dino-mite.”

A nonprofit organization founded by President Grace Berbig in 2018, Letters of Love’s mission is to spread positivity and support to patients in children’s hospitals by writing cards. 

In March 2023, third-year Frannie Dreher founded the Loyola chapter of the global service group Letters of Love alongside fellow third-year Sofia Brown. 

“Service has always been a big thing in my life,” Dreher said. “ I haven’t really been able to get involved in service at Loyola, so I was like, ‘This would be a great way to kind of implement something that I would like to do and something that I find really interesting.’”

What started as Dreher and Brown looking for a way to spread positivity has blossomed into a group of over 120 students coming together to write cards for children in hospitals around the country.

“I’m a creative person,” Dreher said. “I like drawing. I like making little gifts for my friends and stuff. And I thought that this would be a great way to implement creativity but also giving back to the community, and it’s something so simple and easy to do.” 

The cards created at Loyola are sent to the founder Berbig’s home in Minnesota, where they are reviewed and dispersed to hospitals around the country. Berbig was unable to comment before publication.

The club hopes the cards created will provide emotional support to children battling serious illnesses, according to Dreher. 

Any pun with the potential to put a smile on the face of a child is subject to use, according to Brown. “You are bootiful” and “1 in a melon” are just a few of the quirky sayings students have used.

Dreher said one of the most rewarding moments of being a part of Letters of Love is being able to read the “heartwarming” messages created by Loyola students.

“I would say our main message is just uplifting the children and reminding them that they’re loved during their hardships in the hospital,” Dreher said.

With 222 active chapters nationwide, Letters of Love is able to reach hundreds of thousands of children, according to their website. Dreher and Brown said they credit the “relaxed” nature of meetings for part of their success.

“You can make one card and just leave it,” Brown said. “And I feel like that has really changed the way I view this organization, because it’s a way to hang out with your friends, and then you do something good for somebody else and it makes you feel happy.” 

Acts of kindness don’t have to be grand in order to be impactful, Brown said. She said being an active force of positivity in others lives helps a difficult world become more manageable.

“Our main goal is just spreading that positivity and kind of taking their mind off what they’re going through,” Brown said. “They just like to see that someone in the world cares about them and is thinking of them.” 

In less than one year since their founding, the Loyola chapter of Letters of Love has sent out over 400 cards. Brown said the hope is that for each of those 400 cards, there were 400 children who put a smile on their face. 

“I found that being nice and spreading kindness and spreading love makes you feel better as a person and it just makes you feel happier,” Brown said. “And I will live by that model all the time. And I feel like everyone should be spreading love and being kind in such a difficult world that we live in today.”

Letters of Love’s next meeting will be Feb. 21 at 8:45 p.m. in the Life Science Building room 142.

Featured image courtesy of Daniela Acosta.

Editor’s Note: In the original version of this article, Sofia Brown’s name was spelled incorrectly. This has since been corrected.