A student from The College of New Jersey has launched a painting program as a way to say thank you to the hospital that saved her life three years ago.
When she was a senior in high school, Hannah Donner had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed her car into a tree. She was under the care of doctors and nurses at the Hackensack Meridian Health K. Hovnanian Children’s Hospital in Neptune City, in its pediatric intensive care unit, for the next several weeks.
Donner, 21, said she had an uneasy feeling that followed her for a year and a half after she left the hospital. “I want to say thank you, these people literally saved my life," Donner, of Whiting, said. "Me just walking out and never seeing them again, it felt wrong for me.”
In 2018, she came up with the idea of painting ceiling tiles to place them in patient rooms and throughout the children’s hospital. She held her first event this past April and her second this past weekend, inviting TCNJ students to come and paint tiles. Participants paid $10 to paint 2-foot by 2-foot ceiling tiles with quotes, characters or animals. Once they finished, they took a picture together of themselves with the tile.
Ceiling tiles paint at the October Paint It Forward event at TCNJ.
“If people can’t come to the events that I have, I’ve been driving around the state of New Jersey since April giving people ceiling tiles,” she said.
Donner said the experience has helped her shape her future. “It helped me find my own path because I was never really sure what I wanted to do, but the underlying meaning of this project is benefiting the mental health of the patient,” she said.
She explained that even if she doesn’t continue with Paint It Forward, she still wants work in a position helping other’s mental health.
Ceiling tiles paint at the October Paint It Forward event at TCNJ.
Donner has painted 25 tiles herself, and from her efforts about 500 ceiling tiles are currently in place at the hospital. After events, her father loads the tiles into a trailer and delivers them to the hospital.
All the money from the events is donated to the Child Life Program at the hospital, a program aimed towards reducing stress and anxiety caused by hospitalization. Funds will also be used to contribute to the hospital’s Giving Heals campaign, a fundraiser based on the notion that giving back not only impacts the patient but the donor as well.
Joseph Stampe, Meridian Health Foundation president and chief development officer, explained that some people think that if they can’t give a large amount of money it won’t be impactful.
“Here’s an example of a college student making a big impact and it didn’t take millions of dollars to do it, Stampe said.
He said the patients now have something inspirational to look at to make their experience “a little warmer, a little friendlier, and a lot less scary.”
Donner plans to host two more Paint It Forward events before the end of the year. In the future she wants to put the event in the hands of the hospital but will still participate in any way they would want her to.
India Duke can be reached at iduke@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @Inja_NJ.
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