Seniors Alexa Spoerle and Katie Wilson enjoy giving back to their community–one stitch at a time. 

Spoerle and Wilson donate handmade crocheted animals to young children at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. This is not for attention, this is not for volunteer hours, this is not for college applications. This is who they are. 

The two girls started crocheting for fun two years ago. Although, this started as a pastime, it turned into a great opportunity to help those in need within their community. 

“Over the summer we wanted a new activity that was creative and fun, so we asked Alexa’s grandma to teach us how to crochet,” Wilson said. 

After a few months of perfecting their crocheting skills over movie nights or hangouts, the girls decided to do something to help others with their skills. 

“We started taking donations or selling the first few crocheted animals to make enough money to buy all the supplies for the animals to bring to the hospital,” Spoerle said. 

Wilson and Spoerle started crocheting animals for sick children as soon as they got all of their supplies. 

“I wanted to help other people that are going through hard times due to a sickness because recently my mom was diagnosed with cancer and that has been really hard, so I can’t even imagine how hard it would be on a child,” Spoerle said.

Wilson and Spoerle said they have been crocheting for months to collect a total of 30 handmade stuffed animals. The girls hope to brighten someone’s day with each stuffed animal. 

“We are working hard to come up with new ways and ideas to make each delivery more personal, even though the hospital rules state that we cannot hand deliver them,” Wilson said. 

These two love helping others in a personal way that allows them to make a small difference in people’s lives. 

“We both hope to continue doing this for as long as we can because there is always more good to be done, the more ways we can help those in need and we also have fun doing this!” said Spoerle.