Elementary School Students Provide Sweet Messages To People With Viral ‘Peptoc’ Hotline

If there is one thing that all of us need on occasion, it’s encouragement. This includes people of all ages, but it seems as if elementary students recognize just how important it is.

Thankfully, there is now encouragement-on-demand in the form of a new phone number.

When people need a little bit of encouragement, they can call the number and get what they need in the form of a prerecorded pep talk from children.

That project, which was created by teachers Asherah Weiss and Jessica Martin at West Side Union Grade School, has been named Peptoc. Martin’s son, who is in first grade at school, spelled pep talk in that way, and it stuck.

Children between the ages of 5 and 12 make up motivational flyers and have prerecorded messages and life advice for those who call in.

After you dial 707-998-8410, you will hear the following message:

“If you’re feeling mad, frustrated or nervous, press one. If you need words of encouragement and life advice, press two. If you need a pep talk from kindergarteners, press three. If you need to hear kids laughing with delight, press four.”

It’s easy to see how much this was needed because up to 9000 people were calling in every hour since it was launched last month.

At first, Martin was expecting about 100 calls per month and she signed up for the cheapest hotline provider she could find. Two days later, they were getting 500 per hour and now, 9000 per hour.

Some of those who were regularly taking advantage of the hotline were patients from John Hopkins Medical Center. According to CBS Sunday Morning, the principal of the school, Rima Meechan, had heard about a woman who calls in during her cancer treatments for some encouragement.

There was also an administrator of an elder care facility in Iowa who called in to say how much her patients, who are over the age of 90, appreciated the hotline. The office manager who took the call said: “She was calling to thank all of the kids, because she played it for everyone who was part of that facility, and she said: ‘I haven’t heard laughter like that from them in years.”

“It’s more than just the messages that get their attention. It’s the fact that children have the opportunity to support parents, which is an important part of life.” Martin went on to say: “And to be able to be comforted by them gives us great hope that maybe we’re all going to be okay.”

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