RSG student society has 200 cards delivered to nursing home

Rotterdam-based student society RSG hand-wrote and delivered two hundred cards to a nursing home in Bergweg in Rotterdam-Noord. RSG President Fleur Doolaard said, “We absolutely love this city. In times like these, it’s a good thing to be able to give back by heartening elderly people who are currently living in isolation.”

RSG members were invited to send personal messages to the society’s board from the comfort of their own laptops. Doolaard then wrote these messages on the cards. “Hand-written cards are the best. I noticed when I was writing the cards that some of the messages were quite personal, with students telling the elderly people a little about themselves, then asking them how they were. Some messages were so long I had difficulty fitting them onto one card.”

Last Thursday, two members of the board put the cards in the post box of the nursing home, which has approximately two hundred residents. “Our goal was to write a card for every resident.” They managed to do just that. Due to the coronavirus restrictions, they were not allowed to hand the cards out in person, but a Humanitas employee who received the delivery team said the action was heart-warming.

Correspondence and fund-raising dinner

The senders’ addresses were included in the cards, meaning the recipients in the nursing home can acknowledge receipt of the cards if they are so inclined. “It would be great if it resulted in a correspondence of sorts, but we’ll have to wait and see if that happens,” Doolaard said with a smile.

The card-sending action was just one of several actions the society has engaged in these last few years. “We have a Social Engagement Committee, which was supposed to host a fund-raising dinner soon. That is not happening, but instead they will create meals that will be delivered [to the donors], which they have rechristened ‘cycling dinners’.” [The Dutch name ‘benefietsdiner’ is a successful pun – ed.]