A seven-year-old girl has taken it upon herself to help children in need this Christmas by collecting pyjamas for Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Islington Gazette: OliverOliver (Image: Archant)

Stevie-Leigh Hull, a pupil at Prior Western Primary School in Whitecross Street, Finsbury, has just completed her third successive year of work for Oliver’s Christmas Collection.

The collection is an initiative set up by Great Ormond Street in memory of Oliver Bonnington, who lost his life to neuroblastoma, a form of cancer found most commonly in children, at the age of two.

Each year, Stevie-Leigh uses her own personal network of friends, family and schoolmates to collect pairs of new pyjamas for the children of Great Ormond Street. This year, with the help of her brothers and sister, she managed to collect an incredible 900 pairs.

“I just came across the appeal on Facebook a few years ago and she asked me what it was for,” explained Stevie-Leigh’s mother Leighann, 29.

“I told her what it was about and straight away she said: ‘I’m doing that.’ It was all off her own bat.”

And Stevie-Leigh does all the work herself. While her family help her get in contact with possible donors and collectors, it’s Stevie-Leigh who wraps, labels and sorts the pyjamas that are donated.

“I do the collection for all the children who spend Christmas in hospital and not with their mummy, daddy and family,” said Stevie-Leigh. “I do it and deliver them so that a child who is poorly can smile at Christmas knowing there are people who care.”

Leighann said that since her daughter began helping she has grown extremely close with Oliver’s mum, a woman she’s never met but who says that she couldn’t be happier with all the hard work that Stevie-Leigh is putting in.

And if that wasn’t enough, Stevie-Leigh and her family all run the 5k Race for Life every year, this year raising £500 in Oliver’s name.

“I’m so proud of her in every way” says Leighann of her daughter. “She just cares about making people happy.”