When Rickee Stewart got engaged,
instead of registering for wedding gifts,
she registered for winter coats.
Just gave myself chills.
Wait til you find out why.
Watch.
I'm Rickee Stewart.
I'm a high school business teacher in West Jordan, Utah,
and I helped to make a pantry for our students in need.
For your notes and for your test,
you want to put that sucker down.
This is my third year in teaching.
These kids inspire me every single day.
That's what teaching means to me.
Well, I call 'em my kids,
and I really, truly feel that way
about each one of my students.
And the things that these kids go through
before they even walk in the door of my classroom,
it's something you can't even imagine.
You have kids that are primary support for their family.
You've got other kids that are raising kids
within their family,
you have kids that are saving their school lunch
to be able to feed younger siblings at home.
We have stories that blow my mind.
So I reached out to our principal
and asked what help they actually needed,
and that's when he told me that we had homeless kids.
When he started giving me the numbers, it was staggering.
I didn't realize that 45% of my kids
were severely low income.
That's half the kids I teach.
That's when I first learned
how deep this problem really was.
My initial foray into this was to help
raise a campaign to bring in canned food for the kids.
Our pantry is no questions asked.
If kids need food, if they're requesting the food,
they get it.
They take what they need.
It's open for them to shop and take it
without anyone giving them any hassle whatsoever.
When I got engaged,
instead of registering for traditional wedding gifts,
I decided to register for coats for the kids in need
at my high school.
We asked for 15 pairs of shoes and the 15 backpacks
and 15 coats, then this whole thing went crazy.
(laughs)
The more we just kind of put this out there,
the more we got in return.
It was amazing.
It was absolute strangers from all across the state,
then from the country, then from the world.
Most of these people have never been to West Jordan,
wouldn't even know where West Jordan was on a map.
At this point we've received 1200 winter coats.
We have 2100 homeless kids in the school district,
so we still need a thousand coats
to just take care of the kids for this year.
I had kids just tell me thank you.
They didn't want to explain why,
but that this was really important to them.
These kids will be forever changed
by the generosity shown to them
by people throughout the world.
I just love you, I'm gonna hug you,.
(applause)
I just wanna hug you.
(applause)
So obviously you decided on this registry thing
when you saw the need, you didn't want for yourself, right?
Right, it actually started because my mom was bugging me.
She wanted to give us something for our wedding
and we really didn't need anything.
You just feel wrong taking it.
Absolutely, and we had,
I knew that we had this need at the school and I thought,
well maybe we can help 'em with just a couple of things.
And then, we just had strangers from all over
giving to our project so quickly.
(applause)
So we teamed up with Burlington stores.
I've been going to Burlington stores
since I was a little itty-bitty.
They wanted to help, of course, they're big-hearted people.
They have great brands and great styles everybody loves.
Amazing values every day.
That's true, been there my whole life.
They're giving you the thousand coats you were short
from this year.
(applause and cheers)
So I believe the thousand coats
takes you up to the to top so every kid has a coat.
It does, yeah.
Okay.
Through Burlington's partnership
with Adopt-A-Classroom.org,
they are adopting your school and donating $10,000.
(applause and cheers)
Here's a big check.
(loud applause and cheering)
I love a big check!
Again, a big-hearted, giant thank you to Burlington.
You're amazing.
(applause and cheers)