Madison Sanders is today’s featured blogger. She’s a young woman who’s experienced several hospitalizations in her life. She’s here to explain how she’s paying it forward to hospitalized kids through her Teen Journal challenge. Read on to find out more about it and how you can help.

Teen Journal Challenge

I am sure you are wondering what is the teen journal challenge? The teen journal challenge is an ongoing project that I started in June 2014 to collect journals for teenagers in the hospital.

To date, I have donated 335 journals and 160 lip balms with the help of generous companies and friends. You can read more the most recent donation here.

It was always a dream of mine to give back to the hospitals where I have been a patient. I even wrote about it in a blog post called 21 Wishes, but kind of put it on the back burner.

That all changed in June of 2014. I was preparing for another foot surgery, and I thought to myself, “Now is as good a time as any to give back, and maybe I can get others involved, too!” I wanted to focus on helping others instead of the constant pain I was in. I posted a status on my blog’s Facebook page, and it took off from there!

The first donation was so well received that I gave back to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta twice. Now, I am preparing to take a donation to Greenville Memorial Hospital. This is the hospital that my brother and I were born. Having me spend three and half months in the NICU was stressful for my family. Years ago, I had thought about giving back to the NICU, but now I am more focused on teenagers. Why teenagers, you ask? Teenagers are often forgotten about when it comes to gifts and donations, and it’s my mission to change that.

I won a journal playing bingo from my hospital bed while recovering from a pretty major back surgery as a teen. Writing has always been a form of creative expression for me, so journals were an obvious choice. As I have told many companies recently, I chose journals because I want to provide them with the materials to spark their creativity and expand their horizons beyond the hospital walls. Dreams start as thoughts in our heads, then go to words on a page, and eventually become reality.

If you would like to help me, please email me at writing4612@yahoo.com. You can send a check, gift card, or buy journals and ship them to me. If you choose to buy journals, do not get composition notebooks. They can be any size or material. Just remember, they’re for teenagers.

Together, we can all make a difference!

Questions about Teen Journals for Madison?

Has Madison inspired you to help her cause? Remember you can email her at writing4612@yahoo.com to find out how to make a donation. If you have questions for Madison or suggestions, leave them in the comment box. Madison will get back to you!

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