Starlight Children’s Foundation Canada partnered up with the Ardene Foundation to thank frontline workers across Canada. During the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers have been working tirelessly to protect the community at large, including Starlight’s seriously ill and immunocompromised children who are most high-risk.

These kids and families wanted to show their appreciation. The Ardene Foundation helped make that happen.

In the wake of the pandemic, the Ardene Foundation donated 2 pairs of running shoes to 180 seriously ill children across Canada. Shipped safely and directly to their home, each Starlight family received one child size and one adult size, along with provided fabric markers.

Children and teens at home decorated and personalized these two pairs of shoes with a specific healthcare worker in mind, wherever their imagination took them!

Starlight children then kept one pair for themselves, while the matching pair was given to a healthcare or frontline worker of their choice to thank them for their service and courage.

As frontline workers wear their shoes, they will be reminded of those they are protecting and remember just how appreciated they truly are. As Starlight children wear theirs, they will remember those who fight alongside them every day through their health battles, before and during COVID-19.

Just some of the hundreds of kids with hand-drawn shoes for them and their healthcare hero!

Healthcare workers on the front lines are constantly changing their footwear to minimize the spread of the virus. Designed by the immunocompromised children that these healthcare workers are protecting, these shoes are giving a little piece of that protection back to them.

Each child and their healthcare worker has their own story to tell. Both before and during COVID-19, these nurses, therapists, and doctors have fought alongside seriously ill children and their families every step of the way.

Over the next month, we will be telling you those stories, and sharing how shoes are connecting immunocompromised children confined to home to their healthcare heroes, thanks to the Ardene Foundation.

To kick it off, our very own Captain Starlight would like you to meet his “gem” healthcare hero, Angie!

Angie is a Child Life Specialist at Shriners Hospitals for Children – Canada. “Her devotion to all children from across the world that come in the Shriners Hospital is inspirational,” Captain Starlight shared.

The two have worked alongside each other for years now to offer support in-hospital, so Captain Starlight was so excited to show his appreciation and gift her a pair of his hand-designed Ardene shoes!

To check out more photos on social media from this initiative, click here!