It was a hoppy good time at the second annual Beeping Easter Egg Hunt.  A partnership between the Edmonton Police Service (EPS) and Edmonton Police Foundation (EPF), this fun event allows kids with visual impairment and blindness to participate in the age-old game of an Easter egg hunt.

“The beeping eggs allow them to be independent and build self-confidence and do the activity by themselves using auditory cues as opposed to visual cues,” said event organizer Detective Ryan Katchur.

Members of the EPS Bomb Unit created the plastic eggs, which emit a beeping sound.  The event is adapted from the Rachel Project in the United States.

“Being among the kids brings policing down to a human level,” Superintendent Nicole Chapdelaine said. “It allows us to kind of get away from our day-to-day job and the function that we all do and bring us back to the core reason why a lot of us have joined policing. To be with community. To serve the community.”

As one parent of a visually impaired child put it: “It’s a huge, huge event for our family and for all the other children that we know with visual impairments.  So, thank you very much to the Edmonton Police Service and Edmonton Police Foundation.”