Betcha didn't think I'd write today! You were wrong. Today I'm going to be giving you guys some information about my campaign for homelessness. I figured this would be a good way to spread the word and give the back story all at the same time! Like and Share this post if you enjoy it. Thanks!
I'm going to go way back in time for a second here. I joined youth group at Church of the Open Door in 2013. I really enjoy every aspect of going to youth group, but I definitely love our service environment nights the most. For those of you who don't know, on a typical service environment night all the kids at our church split into groups and are assigned a place to go volunteer. This could be a homeless shelter, or a charity organization, or even someone's house to help them complete tasks that are difficult for them to do on their own. I would say when we volunteer we're usually there for about 2 hours.
One service environment night this year, I was assigned to go to Simpson Shelter in Minneapolis. I thought this would be a normal night. I had gone to homeless shelters before and it was actually pretty fun. This one was not. My group and I took a tour of the shelter and saw that the men had to sleep on mats on the concrete floor. The walls smell musty, and it resembled an old high school gym. A lot of the men had to sleep with multiple blankets. It was so cold and there wasn't enough to go around. Long story short, I left that shelter feeling absolutely terrible. It's hard to go there and volunteer. I have everything. They have to fight over a comfortable place to sleep.
Upon returning to the church I contacted one of my youth group leaders, Amanda. For a long time we emailed the donation director of Simpson Shelter. We were trying to figure out a way to get fabric donated so that we could make blankets. I knew that was something I could do to help. Maybe it wouldn't help a lot, but I knew I could make blankets and I knew if I were in their position, I would want one. Anyways, we got nowhere fast. Fabric is just so expensive and it's hard to get approved for fabric donations considering I'm just one small individual. I waited a long time before anything happened. Finally an idea came to me in the middle of the night. Hard to imagine this was only about 3 weeks ago. I decided I could use my birthday money to buy the fleece! Thus, birthday blankets was born.
I tried a few different websites that charged me a bunch of money until I found Fundly. They don't take a huge percentage of my donation money which is what I was looking for. With my stepdad's help, I set up an online account and started asking for donations instead of presents for my birthday this year. I've come so far and have raised $545 so far! The campaign ends on the 19th of September and I'm sure I'll reach my goal! It's so crazy to me that all because of youth group I've been able to start helping people! The whole experience has taught me that you can always do something. Even when you think you don't have the resources. I'm really thankful for the whole thing!
That's all I have for you today! I hope you enjoyed reading the story! It was fun to write. If you have any questions feel free to comment on this post, otherwise message me! If you'd like to donate to Birthday Blankets the link is right here ( https://fundly.com/birthday-blankets ) Thank you all so much. I'm really looking forward to getting these blankets put together and donated!
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