Children know: Itâs been a tough year.
Nearly 200 of them from across the region wrote letters to Helping Hands this fall on behalf of someone whoâs had a particularly hard 2020.
Each of the studentâs letters described how they would use $200 to help someone else. Helping Hands, sponsored by the Wisconsin State Journal with the support of generous donations from readers, selected more than three dozen of those letters, and youâll find excerpts from them here.
All of the writers showed a sensitivity to the special hardships this year brought: the COVID-19 pandemic, economic devastation for small businesses, serious illnesses such as cancer complicated by job loss, and a thinly stretched health care system. One girl even wrote about her community swimming pool, which had to close this summer because of the pandemic. She described how much that pool had meant to her in summers past â a reminder that some of childhoodâs greatest, simplest pleasures have b