Karma for Cara Foundation awards microgrants to youths 18 years of age and younger who spearhead exceptional service projects in their communities. Meet microgrant recipients and brothers Lucas and Cooper of West Orange, NJ. They used their award to help their mom with The Giving Tree project at her school. She helps all the needy families in her school by getting donations from other teachers. The Giving Tree Project provides children with coats, clothes, and new toys for the holiday season. Lucas and Cooper made breakfast baskets. They wanted to put together breakfast baskets for the families to have a special breakfast together on Christmas morning.
- How many people participated in your service project? 50 parents and children
2. How many hours did you and other participants spend on the project? 8 hours
3. What did you learn from this experience?
We learned that it is better to give than receive. When we were sitting down and having Christmas breakfast, we commented about how happy we were that over 60 families were having a hot pancake breakfast with chocolate chips because of us! It made our Christmas!
4. How will your project continue having an impact in the future?
This project turned into another project of helping. We wanted to help homeless children in need. We organized a sock drive through the scout pack we are a part of. We donated the socks and other hygiene products to a local shelter.
5. Overall, summarize how your project was completed and how you think it went.
In the beginning, we didn’t realize how much work it was going to be. After visiting many different grocery stores to get the best prices so we could make the most baskets, it turned into a community effort. We asked our neighbors and the cub scout community to help us and they got involved by making the baskets with us. It was such an amazing feeling to see everyone coming together to help people in need. We also received certificates of appreciation from the Superintendent of the school system we helped.
6. How was the Karma for Cara microgrant helpful in the completion of your project?
Without the Karma for Cara microgrant we wouldn’t have been able to help all the families. It would have been a much smaller project.