A KIND-HEARTED youngster came up with a creative way to keep her community’s spirits up during the coronavirus lockdown.
Eight-year-old Olivia Edgeler designed and made more than 100 personalised Easter cards for Peacehaven residents, hand-delivering them during her daily walk.
She said: “With the virus, people might be a bit lonely or feeling ill or sad.
“I thought this might cheer them up.
“I’m putting Easter decorations and happy faces on the cards and lots of other different things.
“Then I write messages inside like ‘stay safe’ or ‘keep smiling’.”
Her mother, Teresa Edgeler, joked that it would be “easier to mass produce the cards”. But that was never an option for Olivia.
No two cards are the same and the custom-made creations have already proved a hit with neighbours after Olivia started making them a couple of weeks ago.
Her exploits were posted on social media and she was soon flooded with requests from people asking her to post a card through the letterbox of one of their loved ones.
Her mother, Teresa Edgeler, said: “Walking around Peacehaven, she asked me what the rainbows in people’s windows meant.
“I told her they were to make people smile and not feel alone. She really liked that but she wanted to take it a step further, helping people who were on their own. She started to do it and was met with quite the reaction.
“Somebody posted about them on the town’s Facebook community page and asked who had sent it, as we didn’t sign our surnames.
“Then people started requesting that she sent a card to their mum or their gran.”
Olivia has managed to bypass boredom during the lockdown by throwing herself into making the cards.
She also goes to school some weeks as her parents are both key workers.
Her mum, Teresa, works at the Meridian Community Primary School and Nursery in Peacehaven and her father Christopher, works at Natwest.
The ever-optimistic Olivia said she goes to school some weeks and “mixes it up”.
Teresa said: “I’m incredibly proud of her. From the moment I said there will be odd weeks when I will have to go to school, she understood it so well.
“For any child, or any adult even, what we are seeing right now is so far from anything we have experienced before, so for her to understand and then to do something like this for other people, I’m so proud.”
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