Amaral Carvalho Hospital is a reference on the treatment of cancer in Latin America. For children undergoing treatment, isolation can hurt more than any physical pain. They are pulled from their normal routine and away from friends and family for their low defenses.

To help shorten this distance, inspired by classic teddy bears (symbolic companion of children), we developed a special line of bears that receive and play audio notes from WhatsApp sent from family and friends everytime children press the teddy’s hand. They were named “ELO” (means “LINK”) for linking hospitalized children with the love they miss from home.

The ELOs made huge impact on the kids and families, and when the project’s video was posted on the hospital’s fanpage it became one of the most shared videos in Brazil.

It made headlines and as it gained the world, Brazil’s Minister of Health said “it’s one of the most sensitive things he’s ever seen as a health professional ” and all the way from Silicon Valley, WhatsApp founder quoted “to see whatsapp help people in such an inspirational way is why he gets up and go to work everyday”.

Since emotional support is an extremely important part of the treatment protocol, we wanted to find something that could actually help improve their chances of recovery. Being a public hospital, it treats mainly families that have little resources. With the ELOs, we found a totally costless solution, as WhatsApp works on any smartphone and the messages are sent for free.

Being a public hospital, it treats mainly families that have little resources, so it needed to be something that they could all participate in without spending much of money. With the ELOs and its built-in app on one end and cell phones on the other, we found a totally costless solution, as WhatsApp works in any smartphone family and friends had and the messages are sent for free. Each child received one ELO and each one had a specific number that was given to friends and family so that they’d know where to send the message for that specific child.

Aside from bringing enormous happiness and relieve to both the children and their families, the ELOs became an international phenomenon. The project brought an unseen visibility for the hospital with a calculated U$7 million in earned media nationally and internationally. It impacted over 60 million people on social networks alone and became a medical benchmark for hospitals throughout the country and abroad, being written about in medical and health publications in different countries.