Many students spend their birthdays with their families or friends at home. However, senior Sami Tolliver spent it at Children’s Mercy. Tolliver has been fighting a life threatening illness and has been a patient at Children’s Mercy for almost three years. Recently, she spent her birthday in the hospital. This experience influenced Tolliver to start a business called Birthday Brightness.
“Birthday Brightness focuses on creating personalized and magical birthdays for patients that spend their birthday at Children’s Mercy,” Tolliver said. “I spent my 17th birthday as a patient and I cannot even express how special the hospital program made it for me. So after that, I knew I wanted to help them continue what they’re doing.”
Tolliver said her mission is to surprise the children at Children’s Mercy for their birthdays, whether that’s with individualized gifts, themed surprises or heartfelt cards. Tolliver’s friend, senior Camille Mitchem, has known Tolliver since first grade.
“I think it’s awesome that she’s taking the situation that she’s been given, and changing it for the better,” Mitchem said. “It’s just like Sami to create an organization to help others, because she’s such a selfless person.”
Tolliver said her plan is to start the organization in September. She said the organization is about a third away from its donation goal through GoFundMe, raising over $5,000 from 58 donors. Tolliver said she is excited to get started.
“I think my business is unique because there’s not anything very close to it,” Tolliver said. “Typically, when I talk to the Child Life Program at Children’s Mercy, birthdays weren’t something that a lot of people thought of.”
Tolliver has been working on emailing larger businesses to gain support, and even got the opportunity to work with KCTV5. Tolliver said she plans on further expanding her project to other children’s hospitals.
“I’m proud of the purpose of the organization,” Tolliver said. “And I’m going to be even more proud when I see the outcome and the effect that it has on not only the patients, but the staff and [the] wider community.”
