Be kind and rise

If I’m selected as one of the winners for this prestigious award, there are so many things I would like to do: the most important from the list is feeding the kids in our community, by providing after school meals. Feeding the homeless in the DC, MD, VA area. I want to create an arts/reading corners in the shelter homes where these people can spend some time engaging in fun activities. I want the young kids to be engaged in the kind acts and to provide them opportunities that I never had, where young kids can volunteer and experience the joy of giving back. I want to let the kids know that it is not hard to be kind. When they will learn my story they’ll know that age cannot stop you. The prize money will help me organize more events, distribute more food, and help many many more in our community. It will help me focus on my projects. Without funds I have to plan fundraisers which takes lot of time and focus, and delay our main mission of helping others. This grant will help us solve that problem and we will be one step forward in our mission. 

I’m a 11 year old girl, I love helping others, so, my parents filed for non-profit, Be kind and rise.  

Since I was kid, I use to wonder why some people have no home, live on the streets with no proper food and clothing. I use to question my parents: why we distribute food/water to these people in the DC parks, knowing their situation, I wanted to help them. I wanted to volunteer with different organizations but sadly was turned away as they said a 5 year old cannot help. I was sad and started thinking of ways that I could give back. I started sharing most of my birthday gifts with kids at a local shelterhome, it gave me immense joy to know that I made someone happy. Since then I have raised funds and partnered with organizations like Ellie’s Hats, No kind hungry, NEST4US, ibloom, generosity feeds, FCPS afterschool meal program, and many others. 

I want to help young children to engage in kind acts and learn the art of giving to experience the joy themselves. We cannot help everyone but everyone can help someone. 

“Always use your wings of kindness to fly high in peoples heart”

Our organization is working on spreading joy in simple ways possible. Our mission is to fight the hunger problem in our community. We also try to use artistic and creative approach. For example last year during peak pandemic time when we were all in locked down and there were no mask available, we taught ourselves sewing and made over 2500 fabric mask and distributed all over the country to hospitals, military,  health centers, covid testing centers, cancer hospitals, delivery guys and many other frontline workers from March 2020 to July 2020, to spread joy and make them feel special we created handmade thankyou notes to appreciating their hard work. We worked day and night to achieve such numbers in merely just few months so we could help as many as possible. We work on feeding the homeless population in DMV region. we also provide afterschool meals, because no kid should be hungry and this pandemic have only increased their numbers every day. We have worked with Navy elementary school to distribute the food for after school meals. We are also working with local pantries and organization to help collect non perishable food items and distribute them. 

I’m a little kid, I try to solve the problems in a very simple way. I love baking and arts. I try to use my skills in raising funds and pay for my projects. Sometimes I have used my piggy bank money as well, and I feel proud that I was able to fund some of my projects in the past. I felt immensely proud when two years back, I did a bake sale and raised over $1200 in just two days. I learned that when we put our heart and soul into something, there’s nothing that can stop us. During my last 5-6 years of serving time I have experienced that one need not be rich to help others, they only need a rich heart. So, helping others is something that is so much fun for me as I get to help someone and put a smile on their face while I am learning something fun, like new baking skills, artwork, creating beautiful cards, something I could do all day without getting tired. My dad always tell me this: ‘always do what you love, and you’ll never feel that your working’(Marc Anthony), I completely agree with him. 

I hope that the tiny ripples I’m creating in this vast ocean will travel farther. I want to help as much as possible without counting. At the same time I know that if I want to gain more trust and more volunteers, they want our organization to be more transeparent and show the work we have been doing. So, we created our Facebook page Be kind and rise, where we share our events and projects. We are also working on our website currently, I’m building my own website. I’m taking slow steps in my journey and loving every bit of it. I’m hoping to develope a website/app for seniors and children, where they come together and children can read books to our seniors and help them brighten their day. If I receive the grant, it would help me develop this app faster as I can seek help and make this dream a possibility as well. We also want to work on creating meal packets that are simple to be packed in our meal packing events for kids. These meals will be packed with nutritions, vegetables, beans and rice and could be quickly prepared.