Volunteers in the Time of Covid

Dear friends,

We hope you are doing well and staying safe. We miss seeing and working with our volunteers and community partners. With COVID-19, much of our normal work and typical routines have changed—and yet, the support we provide to our kids and families continues.

The hospital is maintaining a restricted visitation policy—one caregiver per patient at Children’s, no visitors at OU Medical Center—and will continue to restrict volunteers and event groups on site. So many of you have reached out, eager to join us once again. We truly appreciate your commitment to our families but must hold steady with current policies to keep our patients and each of YOU safe.

While we miss your helping hands, we are trying our best to provide care, support and positive activities to our kids and families. The Zone remains closed but the Toy Cart still sees about 150 kids each week. In addition, activity kits and toys are going out daily—all gifts, as we cannot clean in between and use precious sanitizing supplies. We’ve opened private video channels to offer craft “how-to” videos and book readings. We host live BINGO games multiple times a week and have lots of participation!

In addition, we are collaborating closely across our OU Medicine system, connecting with community and corporate donors. More than 200 have contributed monetary gifts and gifts of personal protective equipment (PPE), cloth masks, sanitation supplies and meals for employees working so hard during these challenging days.

This week, we will begin sharing updated ways to give to help us continue our play, learning and support programs for kids and families. While we’ve always loved greeting and thanking our donors in person, we do not want to put you or our patients at risk. Instead, we are creating all contact-free wish list needs and donation transactions. We will ask donors to contribute funds to sponsor programs or to purchase directly from a manufacturer and ship to us. We do not want anyone to go to stores to shop or gather and deliver toy donations, as we would in a drive.

We wish you the very best! COVID-19 policies and guidelines are continuously reviewed, and we look forward to a time when we can again greet volunteers and partner with our community on special events for our kids and families. From afar, your kind encouragement, support and gifts continue to make a difference… thank you for helping kids feel like kids, when they need it most!

Best,

Sara Jacobson
Executive Director, The Children’s Hospital Volunteers

Play!

We’re still doing it… just a bit differently.
Events-in-a-bag with related videos that keep kids making, playing and feeling like kids -- that’s our new normal.