Social distancing can be boring, lonely and just no fun — multiply that exponentially when a child’s birthday party will have to be put on hold.
That’s why the Dulles South Coronavirus Outreach Team — organized on Facebook — is volunteering to surprise boys and girls with birthday greetings, drawn in colorful chalk, on their driveways in these unprecedented times.
“We do it as a surprise, so the kid doesn’t know,” said Wim Tapley, one of the team leaders. “Basically we do it in the morning, or the night before.”
Co-leader Jennifer Piehler Zickel, with the help of a Google sign-up sheet on the group’s Facebook page, fields and coordinates requests from parents in approximately a five-mile radius, who privately share their child’s name and age.
“We just send a small team of volunteers,” — often a family — to maintain safe social distancing, Tapley said.
“We’re super quiet, and we just book it as fast as we can,” Tapley said. “We’ve only gotten caught once, so every other time I think it’s been a surprise.”
The volunteers are long gone by the time the child and family see the surprise.
“We aren’t even seeing the kids that are coming outside — it’s just a little bit of art, to excite them.”
The volunteer group is providing other services in the Dulles South area, including checking on seniors, and pulling together resources and support during the coronavirus crisis.
“There’s so much kind of doom and gloom being projected, so it’s just a nice change of pace,” said Tapley. “I think it’s great, both for the kids who are receiving the art, but it also is just really nice for the givers.”
