A simple task that has spanned more than 20 years has expanded from one little girl to a movement across the miles.

It all started when Rosie Paulik was in the fourth grade and her father Buz Ecker started writing her letters. He continued doing so when she was away at camp, at college or when she moved to her first apartment, ABC News reported. He’s now writing letters to his 2-year-old grandson.

But earlier this year, she realized something was missing in Buz’s life after he had finally earned his Ph. D at Antioch University.

Paulik said her father had become “aimless” and that “he wasn’t feeling great,” she told ABC News.

She then had an idea.

“I wonder if complete strangers would want to receive a letter from him,” and posted to TikTok offering his letter-writing services.

“Would you want a letter from my dad?” Paulik said in the post, according to The Washington Post. “Or know someone who could use a little kindness from a retired professor with a killer signature and a fountain pen?”

The “Dad Letter Project” was born.

The father and daughter have received 1,200 requests, and growing, for “mail that’ll make you smile (or cry, in a good way),” ABC News reported.

Ecker was “immediately on board” but needed help, so there are “Dad Staff Writers” putting pen to paper. As of Sept. 12, there are over a dozen dads lending a hand to Buz and making connections with those who need it. They’re still looking for volunteers.

Paulik said that each letter is different, from people who are grieving their dads to someone who needs a laugh.

“Sometimes, you just need a dad to remind you that you’re doing great, to offer unsolicited life advice, or to tell you a joke so bad you have no choice but to laugh. It’s like a hug, but on paper,” the project’s website says.

It was a “hug on paper” that Amy Woods in Chatham, England, apparently needed.

She was on her phone trying to take her mind off the anniversary of her father’s death when Paulik’s TikTok came up on her feed. So Woods sent a request, thinking that she’d probably not get a letter, she told The Washington Post.

A few weeks later, the letter came from one of the other letter-writing dads and with it, Woods’ tears.

“It really reminded me of how much — oh, I feel like I’m going to cry saying it now — of how much love I have for my dad,” Woods said.

She said it was written similarly to how her father would have spoken, in a laid-back way.

Woods said she put the letter in a box with other remembrances of her family, saying that it will stay with her “Forever, without a doubt.”

As for Paulik, the original recipient of dad letters, she keeps every one of them in a red bin in her home, the Post reported.

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