Happy Letters is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2015 and officially incorporated in 2023. What began in a preschool classroom in Cashmere, Washington has grown into a community wide movement engaging more than 20 schools and numerous youth organizations across the Wenatchee Valley, with expansion plans statewide and beyond.
Our organization centers on one simple but powerful idea: children can change the world through kindness.
Happy Letters partners with Pre-K ... Read More
Happy Letters is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 2015 and officially incorporated in 2023. What began in a preschool classroom in Cashmere, Washington has grown into a community wide movement engaging more than 20 schools and numerous youth organizations across the Wenatchee Valley, with expansion plans statewide and beyond.
Our organization centers on one simple but powerful idea: children can change the world through kindness.
Happy Letters partners with Pre-K through 12th grade classrooms, youth groups, and community organizations to guide children in creating handwritten and hand-drawn Happy Letters filled with encouragement and compassion. These letters are shared with veterans, individuals undergoing cancer treatment, children in foster care, patients in children’s hospitals, residents in retirement homes, local shelters, community helpers and more!
In 2022, approximately 1,200 Happy Letters were created. In 2023, that number grew to over 4,400. We are currently on track to create 7,000 Happy Letters this year, impacting not only the thousands of recipients who receive them, but also the thousands of children who learn the value of empathy, gratitude, and service while creating them.
Happy Letters operates year-round through themed outreaches, including honoring veterans, letters for cancer warriors, appreciation letters for community helpers, outreach to retirement communities, and community letter-writing events.
Beyond letters, Happy Letters promotes creating kindness by assembling and sharing over 350 backpacks filled with art supplies for youth in foster care and women's resource centers, delivered more than 400 book packets to youth in children’s hospitals and provided over 400 hygiene packets for veterans. Of course all packets included a Happy Letter made with love by a student in the Wenatchee Valley communities. These resources provide creative expression, comfort, and encouragement during difficult seasons, extending kindness beyond words and empowering children through art, writing and reading.
Beyond direct outreach, Happy Letters is expanding its educational impact. Teachers have expressed a growing need for structured resources to help students better understand who they are writing to and why kindness matters. To meet this need, Happy Letters is developing age-appropriate teacher packets and video storytelling resources that explain topics such as military service, cancer care, and community leadership in compassionate, developmentally appropriate ways.
Our work directly supports Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), a Washington State requirement for public schools that helps students grow in empathy, relationship skills, and emotional awareness. Happy Letters provide a meaningful way to meet these standards by guiding students to care for others, understand different life experiences, and learn what it means to be kind and thoughtful members of their community.
At its heart, Happy Letters is about connection. Each letter represents a child learning that their voice matters and a recipient discovering that someone cares. By bringing generations and communities together through handwritten kindness, Happy Letters strengthens both the giver and the receiver.
As we grow, we remain committed to our founding belief: when children are given meaningful opportunities to give back, they rise to the occasion. Through one simple letter at a time, Happy Letters is building a culture of compassion that reaches far beyond the page.
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