2,800 costumes for the smallest patients: a university's Halloween drive fills a children's hospital with delight, for the eighth year running

Halloween in a children's hospital could be a day spent watching the fun happen somewhere else. For the eighth year in a row, students and staff at Joyce University of Nursing and Health Sciences in Salt Lake City made sure it was not. Their annual Halloween Costume Drive, run over four weeks, delivered more than 2,800 donations to Intermountain Primary Children's Hospital — meeting 100% of the hospital's Halloween needs. The haul covers everyone: costumes for newborns through teenagers, plus puzzles, games and art supplies for children not well enough to join in activities, so no ward is left out of the season. For a nursing school, the drive doubles as a lesson that cannot be taught in a classroom: care is also about joy, normality and a child getting to be a pirate for a day. Eight years on, it has become a tradition the hospital can plan around — and one its smallest patients can count on.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: community action