A new scheme is being rolled out to try and keep residents of nursing homes company during lockdown.
Stacey Fiat started The Pen Pal Project Ireland, and said she has been blown away by the response.
It involves signing up online and being pared with an older person.
Stacey told Lunchtime Live: "It was actually a few weeks ago I saw an article on Facebook of a nursing home in Co Down, who had started a pen pal initiative.
"I could see the smiles on their faces and you could just tell how much it meant to them, I suppose especially during these hard times.
"So I reached out to Alone Ireland to see if there was something similar in the Republic of Ireland, and they weren't aware of anything.
"So I decided to start it myself."
She said she never expected such a response.
"On Friday just gone I set up an Instagram account, and I had got one nursing home in Co Kildare involved.
"So I just set the Instagram account up and paired them up with the pen pals - and it just went from there."
Stacey said she put the feelers out online for volunteers who wanted to become a pen pal with a care or nursing home residents.
"At the start, I had asked people to send me a message through Instagram; and after 4,000 messages I think, Instagram actually blocked me from seeing the messages.
"I think they must have thought I was spam".
People can still sign up through a link on the Instagram account, with the numbers now hitting 8,000.
"It's amazing the response, but the only thing is now we need more nursing homes involved.
"So if there is any nursing homes out there who would be interested, I'd ask may be if they could get in contact with me".
She said the process is quite simple, and all she needs is an e-mail address.
"I know because of GDPR sometimes they can't give me the names, so what some have done is given me initials.
"I will pair them up - it'll go from whoever has signed up first, I'll start at the bottom just to make it fair.
"And I will pair that pen pal with a resident in a nursing home, and then they'll send the letter and hopefully that'll be the start of it.
"And a lot of people have got in touch that they'd like to send gifts and so on".
"I have a lot of people in secondary school looking to get involved, I have people in their 60s and 70s looking to get involved, people who live alone, people abroad.
"I've had a lot of people who are Irish but are living in the likes of Australia and America wanting to get involved".
"The only thing I ask is when they do send a letter to the nursing home that they put an envelope with a stamp on it, so it's not actually costing the nursing home anything.
"The problem with that is if you're living in Australia or America, you can't really get your hands on Irish stamps".
She said some of the messages include offering help to residents and the nursing homes themselves.
"The response has been amazing, just the kindness from people it's just been really, really nice".
Lunchtime Live also spoke to some people involved in the project:
More information on the project can be found here
