you know there are millions of children living in poverty in this country
many in families are homeless and staying in shelters those kids can miss
out on a lot I think so many children take for granted
things like a party on their birthday connecting point contribute early
McGrath
said I would make in person a birthday wishes a 12-year-old organization
now bringing at least one special the year two kids in 195 homeless shelters
across the northeast really started there is a group of three friends
including the current executive director Lisa battle of
and she and her family and friends were really looking for a way to
give back in local shelters and they realized that
I'm children in shelters really didn't have and birthday parties the shelters
didn't necessarily have funds for them
so they came and put on a birthday party the first ones for 5-year-old boy
and sense then we have expanded to over 200 shelters
and we are now across Massachusetts on Long Island New York
Rhode Island and then there's a few shelters in Maine New Hampshire and
Connecticut
as well many of these kids are in public schools and I think people might not
realize that the one of the numbers that
that we had talked about was that there's 44,000 homeless
kids enrolled in public schools in Massachusetts
yes so that is a very large number and
only about fifteen thousand of them actually receive some services in some
help from schools
so there are so many other children that might be undocumented
they might be doubling up with the family members so they're not
necessarily considered homeless
even though they don't have a home of their own okay so how does
parodies kids react when you walk in with this big
but missin I'm it so many kids are so excited the staff members are so excited
everyone's really excited to open what looks like
here I'm so these are part to mastic violence shelters
these ones are ones we can actually go into I'm
so we really fill up this entire box with everything they need to put on a
party
and really we we like to make sure that we can fit
whatever the child's interest in so we have a lot of young girls and
I'm always we always have some super heroes
they also get gifts as well they get yes and we give them 5 gets
on we give them a we have PJ's
we give them always PJ's to make sure that they can snuggle up in something
and then board game Hasbro is a wonderful
donor and they don't need to ask as East Longmeadow had office
are still has an office I'm up
has really it we we give them 5 gets we have a system for giving them guess
so they get a stuffed animal pj's
small item a board game in a toy and 13
talk about a little bit I'm sorry didn't mean to on that we got there they could
some other trauma including the team's
on that a lot of these kids have experienced
you said this is for shelters and which serves
people who are victims of domestic violence so what we're gonna try to have
these kids with witnessed
I'm alive times on eleven other shelters are domestic violence shelters
so we aren't allowed to go in there so a lot of times
there like the passage in North Canton they have I Hayden
on place for all these people live so that they can
their mothers and their children to be safe missus all-volunteer
and all these items are donated that yes about
and 59 percent I love olive
the funding that we guess the individual donations and that might be through
someone just donating a birthday box or
I'm a small business a lot of times they
will donate some money are some items to us so we get almost everything
exclusively through donations and
we also have a five hundred volunteers that go through
every month so a lot of times we have the same line tears I have some of its
volunteers that are always coming in
on the same day and then
an people who will come in for a birthday party one month
and then I'll be a different person coming in to volunteer to break the
party the next month and just quickly I
I know what these kids have experience some sort of trauma
in their lives what does this mean to them when you walk in
with something like that for a lot of our children
they often don't even get to experience birthday party
so there are some parents who may not even tell their child that they have a
birthday
because they're so saddened that they can provide
the wonderful birthday experience and I think it's very expensive
so they may have our first their first birthday party with us when they're six
or seven
and a lot of these children have been moved around so they might change
schools
lost a lot of friends in all the moves Armin separated from family members in
any support system that can really help them out and they're actually right now
in western Massachusetts are quite a few families
that are out from the Boston roxbury area right now
and summer in hotels as well and we're hoping to expand to those
on hotel families at some point in the future
but we also have a waiting list right now with about he
$5,200 kids in these few shelters that really wanna join our organization
so we need to garner up some more donations and hopefully
expand were killed and you real quick and
website WWW dot birthday wishes .org
and all the information is there just look for my name
or western Massachusetts and you can find all the parties you can
sign up to donate as the list because in the birthday box onlookers in goodie
bags all the different ways that you can volunteer with us
alright Megan person thank you so much for joining us today
held