Readly partners with Spread a Smile to provide digital magazine subscriptions for children in hospital
Readly, the digital magazine subscription service, has teamed up with children’s hospital charity, Spread a Smile, to be part of a puzzle kit ‘delivery drop’ this National Puzzle Day (Friday 29 January) to help keep seriously ill children and teenagers entertained during lockdown.
The coronavirus means that children and teenagers in hospital are more isolated than ever before, with one parent visitor (no siblings), no outside organisations visiting, and the usual play activities in hospital playrooms cancelled due to isolation rules. Digital activities, which children can access from their hospital rooms and cubicles, are more important than ever.
Spread a Smile brings joy and laughter into the lives of seriously and terminally ill children, teenagers and their families, providing hospital entertainment such as virtual entertainer visits, art initiatives, ward sessions and regular treat drops and boredom busting activity packs.
For children experiencing extended hospital stays, offering new opportunities for challenge and distraction is crucial. Puzzles bring opportunities to develop problem solving skills and set children and teenagers achievable challenges.
"Marking National Puzzle Day by distributing magazines and puzzle books is a great opportunity for us to spread smiles to seriously ill children in hospital who currently have very little to do. By generously giving access to digital puzzle titles and magazines, Readly are helping provide children with a much needed distraction from pain and treatment." said Lucy Jackson, Chief Executive of Spread a Smile
Readly digital magazine subscription provides unlimited access to over 5,000 magazines and newspapers all in one app. Family and friends can share the subscription on up to 5 devices. Readly’s puzzle titles include Puzzle World, Sudoku Selection, Premium Crosswords, Puzzler Suguru and children’s titles include Beano, National Geographic Kids, StoryTime, Shout and Film Stories Junior.
“Digital reading can help to keep us entertained, motivated and offer a form of distraction during challenging times. We are delighted to be partnering with Spread a Smile to provide access to our portfolio of titles for the children in hospital and their families. Our wide range of content can help them engage in new activities, offer new discussion points between children and their parents, and even their family at home”, says Rob Hanlon, Global Partnerships Director at Readly“
Visit www.readly.com for further information.
For media enquiries:
Kate Tegelaars, press contact at Readly UK
M: +44 (0)7879 818 711
E: kate.tegelaars@readly.com
About Spread a Smile
Spread a Smile supports seriously and terminally ill children during long hospital stays and extended treatment by spreading smiles, joy and laughter at the most challenging of times. Every year the teams of entertainers including fairies, magicians, musicians, spontaneous poets, artists and therapy dogs make thousands of bedside visits, distracting children from pain and treatment and creating positive memories for them and their families. This year their support has extended to include digital services, which are particularly important during the Covid-19 pandemic whilst they are unable to visit children in person. They have created their very own entertainment channel, Smile TV, plus introduced virtual bedside visits where, via Zoom, we can entertain individual children or as a group by inviting everyone on a particular hospital ward. www.spreadasmile.org Charity no: 1152205
About Readly
Readly is a digital subscription service that lets customers have unlimited access to nearly 5,000 national and international magazine titles - all in one app. Founded by Joel Wikell in Sweden in 2012, Readly is today one of the leading companies in digital magazine subscriptions in Europe with users in 50 markets. In collaboration with around 800 publishers worldwide, Readly is digitizing the magazine industry. Our purpose is to bring the magic of magazines into the future, enabling the discovery and survival of quality content. During 2020 Readly distributed more than 140,000 issues of magazines that have been read 99 million times.
