Students’ idea to help kids in hospital smile

Introducing her bright idea: Bag of Smilez.

Marli, with help from her fellow students, has assembled 250 bags filled with boredom-busting activities and items, from crayons and stamps to colouring pages and word searches.

‘‘We had to come up with a ‘big idea’ in year 6 to help the school or the community. Three or four were chosen and Bag of Smilez was one of them,’’ she said.

‘‘It’s a way to do something for the community and to help kids who are struggling.

‘‘It gets a bit boring in hospital sometimes even though we have some great facilities here and I think the kids will really love them.’’

The students assembled bags for three different age groups: 3 to 5, 6 to 8 and 9 to 11.

‘‘I got the leadership team to help out and it took us two lunchtimes to assemble the bags,’’ Marli said.

‘‘A lot of year 6 students got involved. It was so great seeing all those students getting on board to help the community.’’

ERH emergency department unit manager Craig Frew said Bag of Smilez was a fantastic initiative.

‘‘We have 22,000 presentations to emergency a year and 25 per cent of those are paediatric patients,’’ he said.

‘‘So it will help them out, give them activities to do as there’s lots of waiting around time.’’