11-year-old's idea grows into backpack drive 'Kids Helping Others'
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VERO BEACH — Alex Lawson watched the TV news reports of the aftermath of the 7.0 earthquake in Haiti and heard the pleas for financial assistance.
“It made me wonder,” the 11-year-old fifth-grader at St. Edward’s Lower School said. “Are the kids there getting any help? Because I had read that 50 percent of the population is kids. And I thought that kids here ought to be the ones helping the kids there.”
So Alex, son of Rush and Tammy Lawson of Fort Pierce, started a drive to have kids donate their old school backpacks to kids in Haiti.
“I thought backpacks would be perfect,” Alex said. “They can hold a lot of stuff, and they’re like suitcases for the kids who don’t have homes. Most kids here have old backpacks.”
Thanks to Alex, more than 400 kids in Haiti will get backpacks; that’s how many have been collected as of Tuesday morning as Alex and his father loaded most of the 121 backpacks donated by students at St. Edward’s into the family SUV.
“He came up with the idea,” Lawson said of his son. “He did everything to set this in motion. His mother (Tammy Lawson) and I helped out, of course, but we let him know it was up to him to make it happen. We wanted to show our son that, although he’s just 11, he can make a difference.”
Alex started the backpack drive at his school and the synagogue his family attends, Temple Beth Shalom in Vero Beach. From there, the drive expanded widely and quickly.
“It all happened in the span of about 48 hours,” Alex said. “Everything has been kind of unfolding.”
A Christian radio station has been playing promos for the drive, which Alex said got several churches in Vero Beach and Fort Pierce involved. Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Okeechobee also is collecting backpacks.
Alex suggested the backpacks be filled with items such as school uniforms of a “set of nice clothes with a belt, a pair of sneakers or shoes you have outgrown,” toiletries, school supplies and “a drawing or personal item such as a book that you would like to give.”
The backpacks are being taken to Missionary Flights International, a ministry based at the St. Lucie International Airport in Fort Pierce that has been flying relief supplies and aid workers to Haiti.
Normally, Missionary Flights hasn’t been accepting donations of clothing, Lawson said, “because they don’t have the time and manpower to go through and sort it all. But these backpacks are labeled as being for a boy or a girl and for what age, so they can be handed directly to the kids who need them.”
Alex said the effort has had a hitch or two.
“We did run into some copyright issues,” said Alex, who obviously doesn’t talk like a typical 11-year-old. “At first I called (the drive) Kids 4 Kids, but that was already taken. So I changed it to Kids Helping Others.”
Busy kids take time to help others
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Kids today are busy. School, homework and activities might make it hard to find time for helping others. But KidsPost met three groups of kids who are reaching out to those who are poor, sick or lonely. As you think about your goals for 2014, maybe these kids will inspire you to find more time for others.
Performing for smiles
“I really like to make people happy and see them smile,” said Alyssa Feinbaum, a fifth-grader at Greenwood Elementary School in Brookeville. For almost two years, she has performed with 15 other kids in a group called the Teen Angel Project Jr., or TAPjr. They sing and dance for sick kids, wounded veterans and nursing home residents. The audition process includes writing an essay about why you want to be in the group. (There’s also a TAP for high school students.)
“They have to have the heart for it,” said Francesca Winch, who founded the group a couple of years ago and whose daughter is a member. “They have to want to bring joy to people.”
Recently, residents at a retirement community in McLean smiled, tapped their feet and nodded their heads to holiday songs as TAP performed.
Hannah Marill, a sixth-grader at Herbert Hoover Middle School in Rockville, has been in the group since it began.
“It helps my community by giving people smiles on their faces when it’s not really a happy time,” she said.
Hannah recalled performing at the National Institutes of Health’s Children’s Inn, where sick kids stay while they’re being treated. A little girl from the inn got up and started dancing with them.
TAP “taught me to not always look at the outside, but the inside,” Hannah said. “It doesn’t matter how old you are or what you look like: Everyone can enjoy music.”
Proud to help
Jennifer Taylor, 10, and her sister Kimberly, 9, both students at Beacon Heights Elementary School in Riverdale Park, are working to help people far away. Their mom is from the Philippines, and they have visited relatives there. When a typhoon — that’s another word for a hurricane — badly damaged the Southeast Asian country in November, the girls knew they had to act.
“I just wanted to do this because I felt I had to do something,” Kimberly said. “I know [the Philippines] is one of the happiest places you could ever imagine, and I felt how affected they were and I felt that I had to help.”
For weeks, the sisters spent about two hours a day making colorful rubber-band bracelets and sold them at school during lunch. So far, they have sold about 600 bracelets for $1 each to benefit Project Hope, an organization that is helping the Philippines. Their classmates, they said, were very supportive and often helped.
“I feel very proud and I feel very great affecting people’s lives and making it better,” Jennifer said. “I feel proud of not only myself but of my sister and my friends for helping. It helped me realize how fortunate we are in America. . . . We’re really fortunate, but you can only realize it when some tragedy like this occurs.”
Collecting shoes
For Jeremiah Mussmon, a sixth-grader at Blue Ridge Middle School in Purcellville, shoes taught him something about the world.
“I didn’t even realize that people didn’t have shoes,” he said. “I thought everyone has a pair of shoes, but then I got to realize that some people are less fortunate, and I just wanted to help.”
Last year Jeremiah’s dad, Chad Mussmon, started collecting shoes at his business, the Little Gym, for a group called Soles4Souls, which helps needy kids around the world get shoes. Jeremiah was the president of the student council at Emerick Elementary School and decided to get the school involved.
“Everyone thought it was a great idea, so we put a couple signs up,” he said. Students donated 2,000 pairs of shoes, enough to line the halls of the entire school. “I just thought that it was amazing that my classmates could help out, too, and it was going to make a lot of kids happy, and it just made me happy,” he said.
Last month, Jeremiah and his family traveled to Haiti with Soles4Souls to deliver the shoes to kids. Each day, they drove to distribution sites to measure kids, wash their feet and then give them shoes.
“At the first distribution site, it was early in the morning. It was a small space. . . . The one thing that was kind of sad was all the kids had cuts on their feet,” Jeremiah said.
Jeremiah’s brother, Graham, 9, was nervous at first about visiting the Caribbean nation. Now he wants to go back and help build houses.
“They were really nice, and even though they didn’t have a lot, they were happy,” Graham said. “It was really fun to help the kids out, and I was glad that I could help them.”
Graham is hoping to get his school to donate backpacks to Haitian kids. When he grows up, he would like to work for Soles4Souls and “go around the world and help people,” he said.
LEARN MORE
These Web sites provide more details about the service organizations in this story. Always ask a parent before going online.
Teen Angel Project: www.teenangelproject.org
Project Hope: www.projecthope.org
Soles4Souls: www.soles4souls.org
—Moira E. McLaughlin
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these stories make me smile and cry at the same time. It just shows that anyone can do something to change the world, no matter how big or small. Love these!
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