For one dazzling minute each night, buildings, boats, nightclubs and folks on the street make the city skyline sparkle by flashing lights on one side of the Providence River. The aim is to brighten the spirits of kids in Hasbro Children’s Hospital, located on the opposite bank.

ASSOCIATED PRESS Skyline lights illuminate downtown Providence, seen from Hasbro Children's Hospital. For one sparkling minute each night, blinking lights from skyscrapers, tugboats, hotels, a yacht club and police cruisers send a goodnight message to sick kids inside the hospital. The kids get their own flashlights to return the message.

The children, in return, shine flashlights from their hospital rooms, as a way of saying thanks.

The event, which begins every night at 8:30 p.m., has been catching on in the New England city for the past few months. Just last week, the Associated Press created a video, which you can watch above, that features the beautiful ritual.

“It’s special to know that people I don’t even know will take the time” to flash the lights, Olivia Stephenson, a 13-year-old patient, told the AP.

Steven Brosnihan, a cartoonist who volunteers at the hospital, started the tradition, which is known as Good Night Lights, the Providence Journal reports. In 2010, Brosnihan realized he could see his bus stop from some of the hospital windows, and he began telling kids to look for him at the stop at 8:30 p.m., when he’d flash the lights of his bicycle, which he rides to the bus, as a way of saying goodnight.