How I Read to 170 Hospitals During Quarantine
hi everyone i’m morgan king
and i’m a rising senior at hershey high
school i first wanted to start off by
thanking everyone for coming out tonight
and i also wanted to thank ted youth x
chocolate out for having me speak
it truly is an honor i know you all have
probably heard this more times and you
can count
but covet has truly been a crazy time so
many people have had to transition
whether that be working online or doing
online school we’ve all had to make huge
sacrifices
and with those sacrifices has brought on
a lot of free time
today i want to talk about how i used
that free time and
ended up reading to over 170 different
children’s miracle
network hospitals it all started right
after the shutdown in march
i was at home laying around in my
pajamas
and it was right after school ended and
i was like let’s watch some youtube
even though i had stayed up the night
before till 2am watching cooking videos
um i found this asmr video of someone
reading my favorite childhood book the
little engine that could
when i listened to her i was hit with
such a wave of nostalgia
after classes i decided to go and look
around my house for
all of my old books and when i was
reading them it just
hit me and i it hit me so hard i had to
sit down
i remembered my mom giving me warm milk
and reading me to sleep
and suddenly i had an idea of how to use
this free time
why not read to the kids in hospitals
after school that day
i got on my phone i called the right
people at the hospital and i told them
my idea
eyes wide open and looking back i got
the response i should have expected
i’m sorry unfortunately no visitors are
allowed
i was heartbroken not only for myself
but more so for those kids who were
stuck with no family to visit them and
no enjoyment
it hurt that i wasn’t able to help them
but as i was sitting there wallowing in
my own despair
my dad came in and said quite possibly
the most dad thing ever
you’re always on your phone why not just
do it that way
correction he then said the most dad
thing ever dinner’s in 30 minutes and do
your homework
when i was annoyed that he always was
reminding me
he brought up a fairly good idea why not
do it that way
i first thought that i could just
facetime the kids
but i quickly dismissed that when i
realized it was only one-on-one
and there was no way for them to be able
to re-watch the video if they were
feeling lonely
then i had a better idea why not start a
youtube channel
it had everything i needed easy access
remote possibility that somebody wants
to watch a video at 3am
go ahead and they could re-watch it as
much as possible
because it’s public domain then came the
harder issue of finding somebody to
sponsor me
i asked my dad if he had any contacts
and he gave me one of his associates who
works at penn state
i talked to her picture my idea and she
loved it
we went over some more details how the
channel would work
privacy rights to the books everything
like that
and she was enthralled she told me go
ahead start the channel do
everything you need to do i was amazed
and then she said one more thing you
only have one week to do it
great i threw myself head in first and i
had the eye bags to prove it
i went trying to record every book in my
house and the harder
topic getting the rights to publishing
those books online
but i was able to do it with a lot of
hard work and a lot of begging
then it became the harder issue of
finding more readers
i realized me reading myself while
impactful
it wasn’t as much as i wanted i asked a
few close friends
and then i asked probably my biggest
helper in all this
my brother he sent out his version of
the bad signal
and now i had this whole new wet network
to talk to
it was amazing i expected maybe five
videos by the first week
and i had over 20. i got back to the
person at the hospital and she was
amazed we were both so excited
she told me she was immediately going to
go to his higher-ups and then i had to
do
probably the hardest thing in this whole
process i had to sit
and wait for what felt like an eternity
but in reality was maybe a week max
who knows but finally she gave me the
go-ahead
and ever since then i’ve just been
posting and posting and posting
however now we have over 50 videos from
people
of all different ages genders
ethnicities
we even have people reading in different
languages and while this process
has been extremely rewarding for me it’s
not the amount of likes or
follows or knowing that i personally was
successful in my idea
it’s every time i get a comment or an
email telling me
that i helped them in any way possible
whether it was putting a smile on their
kid or their own face
or just helping them forget their pain
for two or three minutes
that’s what really matters to me
let’s be honest for ourselves with just
two seconds
covet has stunk i mean i don’t get to go
out with my friends
my favorite restaurants i’m not able to
go and eat
but it helped me do something i’ve been
wanting to do for a long time
it helped me get involved and be a part
of my community
and that’s what we all have right now we
have this huge amount of free time
and we always have the chance whether as
an individual
or a part of a community to make a
change before i leave i would like to
leave you with a little quote that
helped me through all of this
in life when we reach our peaks our
mountains our highs
we might feel great but know that
nothing can grow there
it’s in the valleys the lows of life
that we have the chance to do
and make the greatest change going into
this now this school year or this work
here
do something you be that change
do good thank you guys for your time
and please go subscribe to our youtube
channel at children’s quarantine
and if you personally would like to
submit a video email me at reading for
quarantine
gmail.com thank you guys so much