A few weeks ago we gave our readers the opportunity to request some free encouragement—and not just free encouragement—handwritten encouragement from a complete stranger on a cool postcard (which featured an illustration on it by one of our members, Ilya Milstein, and was printed by Moniker Press). Anyone who was willing to share why they needed some encouragement and give us their mailing address could get a postcard sent to them for free.

During the Vancouver Art Book Fair we asked anyone who came to our table if they would take a minute to write an encouraging message to someone they didn’t know. If they were interested we would show them a request and they could respond by writing as much or as little as they liked (most people chose to write a lot).

By the end of the fair over 400 requests from people all over the world had been responded to. I saw one postcard written by someone who was raised Muslim addressed to a stranger in Israel. We saw requests and responses written in Cantonese and Japanese and many elected to draw pictures instead of writing words at all. We got a ton of stamps and mailed them all out, but not before scanning a bunch! Here are 65 of the encouraging postcards written to complete strangers (there’s actually one postcard here written by an 8 year old, addressed to her future self).

Thank you to everyone who took part in the project by requesting encouragement, giving encouragement, or both.