Over the past year, Chris Hooley and his daughter have recruited friends and taken supplies of sports drinks and granola bars to homeless people on the streets of Phoenix, Arizona. It felt so good, they wanted to do it every week. They made videos and held MeetUps that moved other people to hit the streets until it became a full-fledged charity.
ReKindle.org now regularly organizes “I Got Your Back” Backpack Drives to help the homeless live more comfortably. It was one of these drives in Chicago that resulted in a wonderful video posted July 28.
The marketing group CopyPress partnered with Hooley, who is also in that field, to create a free internet marketing conference with the cost of attendance being a fully-stocked backpack donated to reKindle. The next day, Stefan Winkler of CopyPress hit the streets with Hooley to hand out the free goodies to Chicago’s least fortunate.
The highlight of the day was this encounter with Albert, because they found out it was his birthday. During the conversation, they learned that his birthday wish was to “see a show.” He wanted to catch a movie downtown, so Winkler reached into his pocket and gave him money to buy a ticket and dinner for himself. Albert was so overwhelmed with joy, saying he knew that “God was good,” and this was proof. Watch it now…
This is what reKindle is all about — to try to brighten someone’s day with a bit of kindness. They also want to inspire others to do the same, through sharing videos and stories. Seeing Albert might make you inspired to hand out bags of supplies on the street. If you want to go bigger, reKindle has a tutorial about running your own backpack drives.
You can learn a simple way to help in a 2013 video posted by a Tacoma, Washington couple who share their ideas for what to stock in backpacks for under $20. Some on social media have called these, Blessing Bags.
This reminds us of a story we featured six months ago about a woman who simply asked on Facebook. She received boxes of donations from friends, and then handed out 73 decorated shoeboxes fully-stocked with small gift items. It was so rewarding for all.