Community Corner
120 Volunteers + 1 Hour = 3,000 Happy Birthdays
For the fifth year in a row, Cheerful Givers and Kids 'n Kinship teamed up to fill birthday bags for children living in poverty.
More than 100 volunteers observed Make a Difference Day on Saturday by coming together at Thomson Reuters to fill 3,000 bags of goodies during the fifth annual Birthday Bag Blitz.
According to Karen Kitchel, president of Cheerful Givers, Birthday Bag Blitz participants were part of a group of over 3 million volunteers on the October 22nd National Day of Doing Good.
A collaboration of Kids 'n Kinship and Cheerful Givers, the birthday bags packed at the event will be distributed by Second Harvest Heartland to food shelves and shelters and will allow poor parents to give a birthday gift to their young children.
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The 100 plus volunteers on hand on Saturday assembled 3,000 of the 60,000 birthday bags Cheerful Givers provides to families each year but, Kitchel says, that is still a far cry from being enough to provide a birthday gift to each of the over 174,000 children in Minnesota who are living in poverty.
Volunteer baggers included local Girl Scout and Brownie troops as well as Kids 'n Kinship mentors and mentees and a number of Cheerful Givers volunteers.
Find out what's happening in Eaganwith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Cyndi Johnson, troop leader of Brownie Troop 54041 from Deerwood Elementary School, brought a group of 12 second graders. Johnson said that troop members get to plan an event each month and the Birthday Bag Blitz was selected by the girls as a way to give back to the community.
Mentors and their mentees from Kids 'n Kinship were on hand to help and also to teach the mentees about volunteering.
According to Kids 'n Kinship program coordinator Rita Younger, the organization is "celebrating its 40th year of matching individuals, couples and families as mentors to kids and teens who need additional support." At any given time there are roughly 80 kids matched with 100 mentors.
However, Younger says, "currently there are 70 amazing kids on a waiting list for a mentor."
Kudos to Patch readers!
Ingrid Henry, another Kids 'n Kinship coordinator, happily reported the kinship profiles that have been appearing on the Dakota County Patch websites already have resulted in a number of new volunteer mentors.
