How can we help kids who are suffering like I was?” Michaela Margida asked her brother, Gregory. When she was just 5-years-old, Michaela was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Thankfully, surgeons removed it and she recovered.

But when she was a senior in college, she and Gregory made a pact with their parents that they would someday do something for children with cancer and their families.

Years later, the family sat down to brainstorm ideas.

Both Michaela and her mother, Andrea, had always loved Valentine’s Day, which gave them an idea: “Since Valentine’s Day is all about love, why not send these families love on February 14th?”

Life

Meet the Volunteer Lighting Up Kids’ Hospital Days with Pure Joy

Malia Litman, maneuvered her red scooter through the halls of Children’s Medical Center Dallas and turned into the radiology waiting area. Wearing an ice cream–patterned dress, pink tights and a colorful wig, she stopped by a woman and her two children.  “Did you know it’s National Ice Cream Day?” Malia asked, reaching into her toy-filled […]

That was the start of The Valentine Project, a nonprofit Michaela and Gregory co-founded in 2010 that provides gift packages across the country to children with cancer and illnesses every Valentine’s Day. But it isn’t just the patients who get the gifts: It’s the siblings too, who often feel neglected when they have a sick brother or sister.

The Valentine Project provides kids with boxes filled with gifts—like a book, toys, treats, an Amazon gift card, a handmade pillowcase and a card. It’s funded by generous donors who give directly to the charity or purchase gifts from The Valentine Project’s Amazon wish list. Each year, volunteers put together about 500 packages of Valentine’s love.

One mother of a recipient, Sara Taggart, was so grateful for The Valentine Project’s package that brought so much joy to her daughter Annie—who has a condition that causes her bones to break easily—and her three siblings. “You can feel the love coming out of every item in the package,” says Sara, who returned the following year with an armload of gifts to donate and is now a board member of The Valentine Project. “It’s a ray of sunshine!”

Life

How a Florist Is Making Valentine’s Day Special for Seniors

They just need some joy brought to their lives, a young Evan Sykes thought as he left a local nursing home after visiting his great-grandmother, Pearl Berger. So many of them have no visitors, and they look so sad and lonely. Evan’s heart was touched, and he never -forgot the residents’ faces. A few years […]

Sara now uses her Jewett, Ohio, home as the “Valentine House,” where gifts come to her, and she takes them to her church basement for volunteers to assemble them for shipping.

Andrea, now president of The Valentine Project, says the impact on children is magical. “It’s all about love in the purest sense of the word,” she smiles.

As for Michaela, who now has a Ph.D. in ecology and lives in the Netherlands, she delights in giving kids love some three decades after her ordeal. “Valentine’s Day often heightens feelings of loneliness,” says the now-36-year-old. “Nobody should have to feel so lonely on a day that’s all about love, so we share it with entire families!”