Rise and Shine

photo: The Delicious Life via photopin cc

On November 15, Stamford, Conn., kids will roll up sleeves for their annual Thanksgiving Bread Drive to benefit peers in need. Using kitchen facilities donated annually by an area school or store, kids come together to bake loaves of yummy nut-free pumpkin bread, then sell them for $10 each as holiday treats. Their 2011 sale raised more than $2,000 to redo a youth-designed playground at a local shelter. Wonder where the dough (sorry, couldn't resist) will go this year?

Change It Up

Coin drives are such a simple, tangible way for kids to help other kids, demonstrating how small gestures can add up to something much bigger. Seattle's Wellspring Family Services -- which addresses the interlocking issues of mental health challenges, domestic violence, and homelessness -- is offering area kids a chance to create change by collecting change. Wellspring's Kids Helping Kids coin drive runs through September 1, 2011, and even gives entrants a chance to win their own original song by acclaimed kids' artist Caspar Babypants -- aka Chris Ballew of The Presidents of the United States of America.

Staying Power

image: printliberation.com

Covering so many kids who've taken a charitable idea and run with it, I'd almost started to think all it takes is caring, creativity, and a little elbow grease. An email this weekend from two teens reminded me of one more prerequisite: perseverance.

When high schoolers Henry Dyke and Casey Karnes set out this summer to collect hygiene supplies for their homeless peers in Chicago, they started by asking upscale city hotels for donations -- soon learning these businesses "were not all that interested in helping two teens from [the suburbs]."  They cast their net wider and started phoning, faxing, emailing and visiting suburban stores, congregations, and inviduals. The result? The two met their goal and were able to deliver to the Night Ministry 199 complete hygiene packs, plus $150 in leftover monetary contributions. If at first you don't succeed...    

Give Me Shelter

Like 16-year-old Mackenzie Bearup, I found refuge in books as a young kid, wandering for hours a day in the world of words. Unlike Mackenzie, a CNN Hero, I wasn't driven to this place by intense physical pain.

Six years ago, Mackenzie was dancing to "American Idol" when her knee seemed to explode with pain. By the next day, it had swollen to grapefruit size, and within a week it would collapse when she tried to walk.

Doctors diagnosed Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, an incurable condition affecting anywhere from 200,000 to 1.2 million people. When meds and other treatments failed to ease Mackenzie's pain, she found that the only thing that distracted her from it was reading.

The experience inspired her to reach out to other kids who were suffering. She began collecting books for a residential treatment center, near her Georgia home, for severely abused children. With a goal of 300 books, she gathered 3,000 -- and a passion was born.

Mackenzie has gone on to collect more than 38,000 books to date for homeless and abused children in six states. With her mom's help, she launched a nonprofit organization, Sheltering Books, in 2009.

That's a story worth a book of its own.

(ps Thanks to Generation Cures, via Twitter, for the heads-up on Mackenzie)

Buddy Can You Spare a Quarter?

That's all it takes to feed a homeless child breakfast, Denver restaurateurs Tammy and Noel Cunningham were shocked to learn 20 years ago, when they launched the Quarters for Kids campaign to mobilize young philanthropists in Denver.

Over the past few weeks, students from 33 area schools raised almost $20,000 to feed homeless children in Denver shelters. Contributors won the right to wear hats to school, listen to their iPods in study hall, chew gum in class, and other enticements dreamed up by student leaders.

The mayor declared this Monday Quarters for Kids day, and the Cunninghams opened their eatery, Strings, to participating kids for a celebratory breakfast.

In its two-decade history, Quarters for Kids has raised about half a million dollars (!) for this fantastic cause, and inspired thousands of kids to help their homeless peers. Amazing what a quarter will buy.

(photo: Kristin Morin via the Denver Post)

Heart and Sole

If anyone deserves a shoe sponsorship deal, it's Zach Bonner. The suburban Tampa 12-year-old has logged more miles on foot than a marathon champ and is now in the middle of a March Across America (13 million steps, he says, from Tampa to Los Angeles)--all to raise awareness and money for homeless kids.

When Hurricane Charlie hit Tampa in '04, Zach was only 7. But he took the initiative to wheel a red wagon door-to-door in his neighborhood (spared by the storm) to collect supplies for those hardest hit. He ended up with enough drinking water to fill 27 pickups, and inspiration to match.

With his mom's help, Zach set up the Little Red Wagon Foundation and began assembling backpacks for homeless kids, filled with supplies such as food, socks, and sewing kits. He's rallied teens to build awareness about their homeless peers by sleeping in cardboard boxes. He's donated supplies to underfunded schools. And he's taken 4 very long fundraising walks with his mom and big sister: Tampa to Tallahassee; Tallahassee to Atlanta; Atlanta to Washington, D.C. (this time carrying 1,000 letters about homeless children for President Obama); and the current March Across America, peppered with "projects along the route to help homeless kids."

Zach does all the legwork (figurative as well as literal!) for his foundation, says mom, from making calls and writing letters to organizing holiday parties for struggling families. Video clips reveal a poised, softly articulate but utterly "natural" seeeming youth who just happens to have found his calling early. "It's been my wish for a long time," he told Good Morning America after the second walk. "No more homeless kids, or kids who don't have the same opportunities as any other kid."

Want to join Zach for a bit of his walk, or just check on his progress? Visit the Zach Tracker or follow him on Twitter. I normally don't think 12-year-olds need to be tweeting, but this isn't a normal 12-year-old situation :-)

(photo: Time for Kids)