Jennifer Lawrence Continues Her Christmas Eve Tradition Of Visiting A Kentucky Children’s Hospital

Jennifer Lawrence has certainly been in a giving mood this holiday season.

The actress took a break from her busy schedule on Christmas Eve to pay a visit to the Norton Children’s Hospital in her native Louisville, Kentucky. As People magazine reported, the 28-year-old spent some time with the young patients at a cancer unit and an intensive care unit.

As the report noted, this is now the sixth consecutive year that Lawrence made a stop at the hospital just before Christmas, and she earned some recognition from the hospital for her dedication. In a post on Christmas, the hospital showed a picture of Lawrence with some of the staff members and gave a message of thanks for her dedication to the children.

“A special thank you to Jennifer Lawrence for visiting Norton Children’s Hospital to spread some holiday cheer!” the hospital wrote on Instagram.

Jennifer Lawrence already has a very special connection to that hospital. In 2016, just two months spending Christmas Eve with the young patients, Lawrence announced she was donating $2 million to the hospital to create the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.

In a video announcing the gift, Lawrence said she hoped that her donation would inspire others to give as well.

“As part of my effort to help these children and caregiver, I challenge the entire community to get behind this cause and help my gift by raising an additional $2M to support all of these brave and inspiring children,” Lawrence said (via Hello! magazine).

The actress has expanded her philanthropic reach with the Jennifer Lawrence Foundation, which supports a number of different projects mostly centered in her native Kentucky. The charity focuses on helping children, both by meeting their medical needs and by giving them more opportunities to participate in the arts. It supports medical programs and efforts that enrich arts education in schools, community centers, museums, and theaters. Some of the funds even go directly to artists to help them create new works.

While the foundation has already awarded millions of dollars, Jennifer Lawrence herself has maintained a hands-on approach to charity. Aside from her Christmastime tradition of visiting the children’s hospital, the actress has made other visits to sick children whenever she gets the chance, sometimes very far away from home. As Hello! magazine noted, she stopped by a Montreal hospital in 2015 while she was in the area filming X-Men: Apocalypse.