CHILDREN stuck in the hospital over Easter are to be given Easter eggs thanks to the people of Swindon.

Samuel Way, founder of Bring Back Oliver’s Smile, branched the charity out to help bring back lots of children’s smiles.

And he managed to gather dozens of eggs for sick youngsters.

He told the Adver: “We just wanted to give back to the local community.”

Sam had originally planned to delivery the eggs on Easter weekend, but with prime minister Boris Johnson introducing stricter lockdown measures on the UK this week, he had to bring forward the plans.

“We planned the Easter collection for the poorly kids,” Sam said: “Everyone kind of knew that the lockdown was coming so we took the eggs over now.

“It went mad, we had over 30 normal eggs sent to us.

“Someone even donated a full 48-egg box of creme eggs. We managed to make nearly 40 nests out of what we got.

“It will put a smile on each face. We got donations from all over Swindon.

“We’re really thankful to everyone who donated.”

Sam knows how tough it can be for children to be stuck at the hospital over Easter because his own youngster had to experience it last year.

“My one-year-old daughter Nala was in hospital last year and a couple of people from the army came to her ward and gave out teddies. It was a lovely idea and you could see how much the children loved it.

“It’s not great for a kid to be in hospital at this time and we really wanted to give back.”

The nests of eggs were dropped to Brighter Futures to be distributed around the ward.

Sam joked that it was tricky to capture the moment on camera because he was trying to commit to social distancing.

Bring Back Oliver’s Smile is a charity created by Sam that aims to help raise money and awareness for Oliver Johnson who had a seizure as a little boy.

He went on to suffer acute necrotising encephalitis caused by a virus that attacked his brain causing major damage.

Sam explained: “We concentrate on Oliver, to raise awareness of his condition.

“But now we want to give back to the community and to do nice gestures for others.

“Doing things like this is going to guarantee to put a smile on those children’s faces and we want to do more for the community.”

For more information about the charity and its work visit bringbackoliverssmile.co.uk