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Vikki George, who has severe health problems, runs Post Pals from her bedroom. She tells Trina Wallace about the organisation’s communication successes.

School children in Japan spend time in their English lessons writing to severely ill kids in the UK thanks to one BBC News Online article and bed-bound Vikki George.

Despite having severe health problems, Vikki, 22, spends around three hours a day raising awareness of the not-for-profit organisation she set up as a teenager. The organisation, Post Pals, is a web-based project which encourages visitors from all over the world to send messages, letters and gifts to ill children in the UK.

The BBC News Online article, which picked up on a story in the local Leatherhead press, raised the profile of Post Pals across the globe.

Worldwide impact

“The article was written three years ago but it’s had such a big impact,” says Vikki. “It gave us credibility and showed we were genuine. A little boy from Afghanistan read it and so did a lady from Israel. Now they both send letters, cards and gifts to some of the 100 children profiled on our website.”

Vikki had the idea to set up Post Pals after she started receiving letters from well wishers through young people’s M.E. charity AYME when she became housebound at the age of 17. “Getting the letters was the highlight of my day,” she says.

From the onset, Vikki and the two friends she runs Post Pals with, knew how important it was to have a campaign people could identify with.

Focusing the project

“We wanted to help children and young adults but we sat down together and looked at what made the news,” says Vikki. “We realised that we’d get far more coverage if we focused on helping children.”

Indeed, media coverage hasn’t been a problem. As a spokesperson for Post Pals, Vikki has been on local radio, in local newspapers and she’s recently featured in a BBC 4 documentary about teenagers’ relationships with their bedrooms. Vikki’s is full of piles of post and toys because at the moment, it’s Post Pals’ HQ.

Post Pals will also feature in Take a Break magazine in the next few months, an opportunity that came up after the Post Pals team made the finals of the National Lottery Awards 2006. Indeed, Vikki says the cause is much more likely to get media coverage on the back of awards like this.

Disappointments

“I won a Reader’s Digest Local Hero of the Year award in 2006 and that generated some coverage,” she says. “I’d already contacted The Sharon Osbourne Show but heard nothing back. But when I won the award, the production team contacted me. It seems like the idea has to come from them. A week before the show though, we were dropped. It was very disappointing.”

While fickle media let Post Pals down, technology doesn’t. Vikki says everything the organisation does revolves around its website (www.postpals.co.uk) which has received 1 million hits since December 2004. Every month, it’s Vikki’s job to upload children’s stories. “The website’s fundamental to what we do,” she says.

Post Pals Plus

Vikki is hoping to set up another website in the future. She wants to create Post Pals Plus for young adults with chronic illness. And she’s eager to keep raising awareness of what Post Pals does.

“Lots of people still don’t know about us so we’d like to get on This Morning or GMTV,” she says.

On a personal note, Vikki is also typically positive about the future. She hasn’t walked for six years but with physiotherapy, is optimistic she’ll be able to again.

“Talking to the parents of children who have question marks hanging over the future certainly puts my pain into perceptive,” she says.

Link to BBC online article about Post Pals
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/3673782.stm