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A young patient sports a a Glories Happy Hat, the product of a charity's efforts to bring joy to ailing children through community involvement in the Washington area. (Glories Happy Hats)

At first glance, it may look as if Santa’s elves have set up a workshop in a local high school. Rows of tables are filled with brightly colored materials, pompoms and ribbons.

But at second glance, it’s an assembly line of the local community’s youth, working and laughing together as a team to make “Glories Happy Hats” for sick children in the children’s hospital in a Virginia suburb.

A Glories Happy Hat looks like a colorful jester’s hat and is designed to fit over bandages, casts and other signs of a child’s illness or injury.

“The hope and support that goes into making each hat fills them with happy thoughts,” said Susan Khorsand, co-founder of Glories Happy Hats. "The kindness of each caring youth who makes the hat is passed on to the children in the hospital.

“The hats are designed to be responsive to both the physical and emotional needs of hospitalized children but we also want community youth to understand the value of their health and staying healthy to help others.”

The young makers deliver their creations to the children at the hospital.

“It brings smiles to the children, their families and even the medical professionals,” Khorsand said. “The goal is to promote the healing process by providing psycho-social and peer support to the children.”

However, the hats’ effects are not limited to the children in the hospital.

“Happy Hats have been a joy to me,” said L.W., 14. “It puts a smile on my face when I’m feeling down. I think Glories hats are for more than the sick kids in the hospital. It is also for the people who are making the hats.”

Another teen volunteer talked about a little boy with a large scar on his head from a surgery.

“It was hard to look him in the face because he was so small.” he said. “When I gave him his hat, he smiled, and I felt like I was able to help him feel better instantly.”

The process of making the hats together with the program’s educational curriculum is intended to build self-esteem, self-efficacy, trust and ethics in community youth. Khorsand said another byproduct is community partnerships, with local businesses and organizations providing adult volunteers as mentors.

“The aim of the Glories Happy Hats community based program delivery model is to increase social, human and economic capital in targeted high-risk communities participating in the project,” she said.

Since the program started in 1997, 180,000 young participants have volunteered more than half a million community service hours to create 200,000 Glories Happy Hats. Khorsand said the goal is eventually to have students across the nation create 6 million hats per year; one for every child hospitalized in the United States.