| How it came to be: My mom and I were driving down a freeway off ramp by our house heading to the grocery store. At the end of the ramp we noticed a lonely scruffy homeless person with a sign that read "Homeless and Hungry". My mom reached into her wallet and grabbed a few dollars to give to the homeless guy. Later as we were leaving the grocery store, we saw the same scruffy homeless person paying for beer and cigarettes. Are you thinking the same thing I am? Yes, my mom's money and possibly other people's money paid for some bad things. She told me that we were not going to give money to the homeless, that we would only give food. The next week I came home with an project to invent something. I first wanted to build a mouse trap and then tried to come up with a new way to pick up toys (still working on this one). Well, the first ideas didn't work out (yet). A few days later we were coming down another freeway off ramp and saw another homeless person standing at the end of the ramp. His clothes were torn and dirty. I asked my mom if she was going to give him money. She then asked me "Zack, what would you do to help him if we didn't give money?" I started to rattle off some things and before you know it, came up with the Helping HandBag. We were both so excited about the possibilities that we went to our local .99 Cent Store that night to put our first Dare to Care kit together. |
| As we were walking out of the store I noticed a homeless person standing by a pay phone with his shoulders hunched over as if he had given up. He wasn't begging or saying a word to anyone. It was almost like he was invisible. No one was looking at him and he looked sad and lonely. We rushed back to the car to put our first Dare to Care kit together. To take precautions my mom made sure that there were a few people around before approaching. My mom and I handed the man the bag and wished him well. We got back into the car to watch to see what happened. The man's eyes were wide open with excitement as he started to pull out some of the items. He finally took notice of the snack and unwrapped the snack to eat it. When we backed out of our spot we watched other shoppers looking to see what we gave him. I turned to look at my mom and she had tears in her eyes. I knew I had a good invention after that. |
| Please take precautions when approaching homeless people. |
| Turn "Spare Change" into Helping HandBags! |
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| Paying it forward one kit at a time! |
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