Past Projects
Book Fair
We were so excited to host our third D.O. it for Denny Book Fair at Children's Hospital of Michigan. Many of these patients are receiving long term care and have to miss significant time at school. We wanted to bring one of the best school experiences, the Book Fair, to the patients. We offer books for all ages. We like to focus on books that promote kindness and inclusivity. We include English, Spanish and Arabic books, as these are the top three languages spoken by families at CHM. We were also told that Covid restrictions are being lifted and we will be able to start doing more hands on activities with the patients. This will open so many opportunities for us and we are excited to create lasting memories for these families!
Easter
This Easter we were able to provide 150 Easter baskets for local children in need. We have partnered with Forever Families in Livonia to provide Easter baskets for foster families. We also worked with Hamilton Elementary in the Wayne/Westland school district to provide baskets for families in need. Your donations of Easter baskets, cash to sponsor a basket or amazon wish list purchases made all of this possible. Thanks to your generous donations we were able to include family bundles with egg dye kits, eggs for an egg hunt and more! We came together as a community to make the Easter baskets in mid March so we could get them distributed to families before Spring Break.
Blessing Bags
We collected food, winter essentials and other necessities to put into bags and pass out to people experiencing homelessness. We completed this project, with the help of several volunteers, on Denny's birthday! Denny taught me that showing every person, regardless of their circumstances, kindness and compassion was the most important thing you could do in life. We were able to put together 100 blessing bags. We distributed them at the Elevate Detroit Community BBQ that happens in Detroit every Saturday at 1pm at 3000 4th street in Detroit. They are always looking for volunteers so feel free to join them any Saturday! I'm on a mission to inspire people to treat everyone they meet with dignity and compassion. Please join me by taking the time to find someone in need and showing them some love!
Toy Shop
Through our hard work, dedicated supporters and the grace of God, we collected over 3,500 toys and were able to offer a full Christmas for over 500 children from Livonia, Redford and Clarenceville schools. Our Toy Shop offered 5 gifts per child but that’s only the start. We also had a full stocking room where they could choose to fill a stocking or take a prefilled one, gift wrapping services, a family memory bundle with a game, book, ornament, cookies for Santa and Christmas decoration, a Take What You Need room with food, winter gear, Christmas trees and a variety of household essentials and a raffle with 25 incredible prizes that all went to such deserving families! It was one of the most magical weekends of my entire life and I heard both volunteers and shoppers say the same thing. I’d love to have even more people involved in this next year, so they can feel the magic too! We start (and end) early so be sure to reach out early in 2024 to let us know you want to be a part of the magic!! Please watch the YouTube video to fully understand the magic of Toy Shop!
Santa Buckets
We put together Santa Buckets for local Domestic Violence Shelters. We are passionate about helping women who are leaving abusive relationships and are happy to help in any way we can. These Santa Buckets are a huge hit and help bring some joy and normalcy to the holidays for these women. These self care gift baskets will be distributed to the women during the holiday season. The baskets include things such as blankets, jewelry, self care items, beauty products, journals, devotionals and more. We have done this for the past three years and the recipients are always so thankful. This year we donated 100 baskets to First Step in Wayne, LACASA in Howell and Safe House in Ann Arbor.
If you do not feel safe in your home please call 800-799-7233.
Book Fair
We completed our second D.O. it for Denny Book Fair at Children's Hospital of Michigan. The patients, caretakers and staff were all so appreciative. We are excited to make this one of our regular projects. We included lots of books and goodies for the patients to pick from. This time we focused on inclusion and included books in Spanish, Arabic and Braille. We love to be able to have books for all families at this event. Our partnership with Children's Hospital of Michigan's Child Life Specialists is so important to us. We are excited to continue to find ways to D.O. good for the patients and their families!
Take What You Need
This school year we decided to do something a little different. Usually we do a Backpack Drive to collect new backpacks for children in need. This year we noticed a lot of businesses offering free backpacks so we decided to focus our attention on Take What You Need Stations. These carts are filled with essentials such as soap, shampoo, deodorant, brushes, feminine products and other personal care items that these students may not have access to at home. These daily essentials, that many of us take advantage of, are blessings for so many students. Kids these days deal with bullying on a level we have never seen before, and many times they are bullied for things they have no control over. We are happy to implement these Take What You Need Stations in 6 schools this year and hope to D.O. even more in 2024!
Christmas in July
We had such a successful Christmas in July event! We got to meet so many of our incredible supporters and we collected over 1,000 toys in July! All of these toys will be distributed at our Free Toy Shop in December. I'd like to give a huge shout out to Grand Tavern Livonia for letting us use the space. I'd also like to thank Robb Drzewicki and Brandon McCullough for their generous donation to cover tacos for everyone who came to the event. The tacos were incredible and I know most of us will be back for another Taco Tuesday soon! I also need to thank Self Secured Storage in Livonia for generously donating our third storage unit to hold the over 2,000 toys we have collected for the Free Toy Shop. We are so grateful to everyone who collected toys for us, showed up to the event, donated a toy at one of our drop off locations, shared our event or posts about toy collections and prayed for our success. To learn more about the Toy Shop please visit our Current Projects
NICU
We were so happy to partner with Children's Hospital of Michigan in Detroit to put together this NICU project. We were able to make 26 bags for caregivers in the NICU. They included much needed items like NICU journals, neck pillows, Chapstick, gum, activities to help pass the time and so much more. We provided some sound machines, books and toys for the babies! We also partnered with Chick-Fil-A in Northville to provide lunch and goodie bags for the incredible Child Life Specialist Team at CHM. These incredible people work with the patients to ensure they have as many nourishing experiences as possible during their hospital stay. They truly make this world a better place and we couldn't be more thankful to be able to give back to them.
Appreciation Projects
This summer we showed our appreciation for several local heroes. Broasted Brothers Livonia donated mouth watering chicken to the Livonia Police Department and Markos Cozy Diner donated a delicious breakfast to Livonia Fire Department. Mama Mia's and Valentino's Pizza in Livonia donated pizza for the end of the year banquet for the Special Olympics Track Team. We'd also like to thank Chick-fil-A in Northville for their generous donation of lunch for the Child Life Specialist Team at Children's Hospital of Michigan. Thanks to all of our supporters doing what they can, we were able to add in a nice breakfast for the teachers and staff at Buchannan Elementary.
Kids Day of Kindness
Every year our kids and their friends get together to D.O. good! We host the event in the spring so we can put together our summer blessing bags. The kids love being a part of the assembly line, while filling the bags with personal care items, food and other seasonal essentials. We also have the kids color pictures for local Police Officers and Fire Fighters. This is a great project for even the youngest of the kindness crew. This year we added a fun new project, painting wooden crafts to give to residents at local nursing homes. We arranged to have them given to the residents who do not receive a lot of visitors. We figured this small gesture of kindness could make a big difference in their day. The kids got extra lucky because the So Sweet Ice Cream Truck decided to stop by. The kids were so excited to have their kindness rewarded. If you can do anything in your life, teach a child the importance of kindness.
Blessings in a Backpack
We worked with the Livonia Blessings in a Backpack team to collect macaroni and cheese and ramen noodles. Local businesses collected over 1700 boxes to be donated to local families in need. Huge shout out to Matthew Kulacki Real Estate for collecting the most boxes! We also had a D.O. it for Denny Table at the Blessings in a Backpack Trivia Fundraiser. We were happy to come together and raise money for a good cause. You can learn more about their incredible organization here!
Easter Project
Each year Deanna runs our Easter project and is honestly the best Easter Bunny I've ever known! She puts so much love and effort into these baskets. We collect and put together generic baskets to be delivered to local Elementary Schools where they are passed out to families in need. This year we were able to donate 150 Easter baskets to children at local schools. We also match families in need with sponsors who provide Easter Baskets for each child in the family. This year we sponsored over 20 families.
March is Reading Month
Getting books in the hands of young readers is a huge passion of mine. This year we collected used books to build a library at Forever Families in Livonia. These books will be used by both birth families and foster families as they do as much as they can to support the children in their lives. I am so thankful we have found this organization to team up with. You can learn more about Forever Families by clicking here.
This year we added a brand new project with the first ever D.O. it for Denny Free Book Fair! Deanna and Sammijo put together such an awesome display at Children's Hospital of Michigan. Patients were invited to take a few books and some goodies like bookmarks, journals, pens and more! The book fair is such a fun memory for so many school aged kids, but many kids with long term hospital stays may miss out on those sorts of activities. We are happy to be able to bring the Book Fair to them!
Birthday Boxes
This is our second year creating these awesome birthday boxes. They contain cake mix, frosting, candles, decorations and a small gift card. They are distributed to local Foster Closets so that foster families always have access to a birthday party in a box! Our volunteers love helping put these together. It is an easy way to bring some joy to kids on their birthdays! In honor of my 35th birthday we were hoping to collect 35 birthday boxes, but we doubled our goal!! I'm excited to see how many we can collect next year.
Blessing Bags
This project is where it all started, passing out essentials to people experiencing homelessness. Denny was so passionate about helping the homeless community and I am proud to carry on this tradition. He taught me that it is the compassion and empathy that truly matter. We were happy to provide 100 blessing bags filled with food, personal care items and other essentials to people living on the streets. We enlisted volunteers from our page to keep blessing bags in their car to pass out when the opportunity presents itself. We always have a blessing bag, or two, in our car. It is a wonderful way to meet a direct need in your local community!