WAXHAW, N.C. — Evangeline Dusenberry is known for keeping her hands busy.
Before the start of the pandemic, the 6-year-old collected toys and other items for kids at Levine Children's Hospital for holiday stockings during Christmas.
Keith Dusenberry, Evangeline's father, said she was inspired to start Evangeline's Stocking Drive after spending time in the hospital herself. In 2019, Eva was admitted to Levine Children's Hospital after a severe illness caused her kidneys to fail.
To lift her spirits while in ICU, Eva's family, friends and community members dropped off crafts and activities. Now, she's paying it forward for other kids spending the holidays away from home.
"We could see the immediate results when we give a stocking," Keith said.
In 2020, Eva ended up donating over 700 stockings to four hospitals, blowing past her original goal of 200 stockings.
This year, she's hoping to go bigger. Eva wants to put together stockings for kids and raise donations to ship individual items to hospitals that are wanting to assemble items separately due to COVID-19.
"Right now, we're at $5,800 that we'll have to send items to Levine this year," Christina Dusenberry said. "We really want to try to get to $10,000 to cover the whole spectrum of items that we need."
She wants to stuff stockings with arts, crafts and puzzles for kids. Eva also wants to raise money to help purchase toiletries, slippers and gift cards for parents at the hospital with their children.
"The whole idea is that when they are in the hospital, they are probably going through a lot of testing," Christina said. "There's a lot of downtime, so how do we make sure if they're stuck in their beds that they can still have joy and something to do."
Contact Ruby Durham at rdurham@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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