Lions Club, Cape Ivy donate hundreds of cozy ponchos to UVA Children’s Hospital

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Two organizations are partnering up for a good cause — to comfort hospitalized children.

A small act of kindness going a long way, Cape Ivy and Lions Club are teaming up to donate ponchos to patients at UVA Children’s Hospital.

“They have no sleeves so you can just pop it over their head. The IVs don’t get interfered with. They are cozy, and they act like a security blanket to the children, we have lots of fun, different sizes, and colors, and it just wraps them in warmth,” Cape Ivy co-founder Meg Smith.

This is a personal connection for one of the organizers. It’s keeping her son Gavin’s legacy alive.

“I know what it is to live in and out of hospitals, and I feel it’s very important to support those patients,” Smith said.

Smith says donating these ponchos to children in the hospital is something close to her heart, finding joy in pain, remembering her son Gavin.

“I started this nonprofit with my friend Cindy Hargroves in 2019 because my son was in and out of hospitals since the age of 2, he passed away in 2017 a week before his 13th birthday,” Smith said. “We started making them for him when he was little, and he wanted to continue this and give back to other children. So this is my legacy for him.”

Cape Ivy’s co-founder says the organization started distributing these ponchos to hospitals in 2019 now hitting 20,000 donations.

This year, the Lions of Virginia donated $3,000 to help distribute 300 ponchos to patients at UVA.

“It’s local, and our mission is mostly to take care of blindness and hearing. but then we do childhood cancer, and diabetes, which leads to a lot of the other problems and that’s the big thing,” said Phil Eaton with Lions of Virginia.

You can learn more about the effort and donate HERE.

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