We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Amie & Jaida Burke. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Amie & Jaida below.
Amie & Jaida, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.
“Backing the Need”. Our annual backpack & school supply drive that we partner with Cobb County Police Department (CCPD) on is very meaningful because of the impact that it has on us and our community. The idea started at one of our youth planning sessions. This is where we get together outside at some picnic tables & our youth volunteers brainstorm & select service ideas for the year. (This is what we call “Creating Kindness”). At one particular meeting a student said she did not like seeing her peers not have the school supplies that they needed. She said we should do a school supply drive to help other kids who may not have what they need. At this point more youth chimed in, noticing in their mind’s eye, that they also knew other kids who did not have the supplies that they needed. So we created “Backing the Need”.
In 2021, we collaborated with the CCPD for our first annual “Backing the Need” school supply drive. We collected 283 backpacks that we stuffed with school supplies including everything from erasers to scientific calculators. Backpacks were collected for elementary, middle and high school aged students. All of the backpacks were then donated to our local nonprofits who gave them to students & families in need of assistance in our county. At “Backing the Need” 2022, with the help of our friends at the CCPD and the generosity of the community, we collected and donated 336 full backpacks to our community nonprofits.
There’s a few layers of why “Backing the Need” is so meaningful to us. To start with, as a small nonprofit in two years, we have given a total of 619 new backpacks filled with school supplies to students who were in need- in the county that we live in. That feels pretty significant. It feels like “Yes, we have made a difference”. It feels relaxing to know that our efforts have created such a powerful impact in our neighborhoods. We also know that not only do we personally feel good about giving 619 backpacks out, but our volunteers, the donors, the business participants, the nonprofits and the recipients ALL FEEL GOOD about it. And that is making a lot of people feel good. An action & feeling worth repeating.
“Backing the Need” in 2022 reflected to us how much our nonprofit has grown & nestled into our community. We had a total of 87 volunteers, 17 businesses, and a generous amount of private & public donors. We gave to 7 local nonprofits and one high school. That’s a lot of handshakes, smiles and hugs! All of these connections mean a lot to us, this is community.
Lastly, I’d like to share a special moment that was also impactful. We happened to have the honor to give a few of these backpacks directly to the kids in need. I can tell you that the look on their faces immediately melted away any exhaustion & stress we had felt from hosting such a big drive with so many moving parts. We watched as they stood still in disbelief and then we saw the excitement that would grow across their faces. It was a precious gift to watch them fill with Hope. Their eyes would open more and a smile would grow across their faces. A look somewhat like ‘is this really happening’? Some kids would simply say “for me?” others would bashfully say “thank you”. “Yes, for you,” we said. All for YOU. At this point we would encourage them to look into the backpacks. It was fun to watch them joyfully open their new items. We learned first hand at this moment that some kids don’t get that experience. Now, ever since we witnessed that, as much as possible we try to leave new items in their packaging so that someone may have the simple Joy of opening their new school supplies.
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Amie & Jaida, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We are a mother/daughter duo who co-founded KIDS CARE, a service learning nonprofit in Marietta, GA. The idea was born while driving around in the fall of 2018 and Jaida was 8 years old. I gave her a homeschool assignment to make an acrostic poem with any word. She finished in less than five minutes and had chosen the word KIDS. I asked her to read it out loud to me and she did. “Kindness In Doing Service”. The words vibrated through me. I pulled over and got to the backseat and asked her why she chose that and what it meant to her. She said she wanted to get a group of kids together to do nice things for other people the way kids want to do it. She wanted it to be kids’ ideas, not adults. I gave her a fist bump and said we can do that.
The next few days we spent more time exploring these thoughts, where they came from & her service desires. We created the second half of our name CARE, which is also an acrostic poem and stands for Connecting And Respecting Everyone. I asked her what our first project should be and we began planning it. We got other homeschool friends to participate and together we collected and donated 1,116 books to local nonprofits and schools. It was after this project that I realized this was a real thing that needed to really live. Families & kids were so interested and excited. There was just no way I could not let it grow. Within two weeks of contemplating the idea of becoming a nonprofit, I just did it. In Jan. of 2019 we officially incorporated into a 501(c)(3).
This January we celebrate our 4th year as a nonprofit and we are very proud of our commitment to our community and the local youth. We create service experiences where our community can connect, learn, give and grow together. We hold youth planning sessions where I listen to the kids to hear how they want to give to others and then I stand with them as we do it together. I encourage creating a vision and pausing in the moment when the vision is happening to feel gratitude and acknowledgment of the process of Creating Kindness. We also start/end our experiences with pausing on our service to really tap into what we are doing and why. I love to lead the kids in how to connect with & listen to their hearts.
Our service ‘projects’ have morphed into service ‘experiences’. Taking time to learn while giving has really taught our youth and families a lot about other people’s needs and how nonprofits support our community. Some of our community service experiences have included shoe/book/food/backpack & school supply drives. We donate all of our in-kind goods to local nonprofits. We have handed out over 3,500 Kindness Cards to local First Responders, EMS, 911 Dispatchers, Hospital Staff, Overseas Military Personnel, Senior Citizens and Strangers. We have also helped out at several city functions, worked at food pantries and encouraged environmental awareness and stewardship. All volunteer experiences are used as service learning opportunities to discuss empathy, compassion, kindness, awareness of the needs of others and many more learning topics.
Our youth are very passionate about environmental stewardship and we perform several litter pick ups a year that are followed by an environmental awareness lesson. Every year we celebrate Earth day by serving & educating our volunteers in a fun way. This past year we had an Earth Day Poetry Contest and Scavenger hunt followed up with a litter pick up & free potted flowers for everyone to make & take home.
Always our intentions are to create and give Kindness. One of our volunteers favorite experiences is World Kindness Day. At this experience our volunteers practice Kindness by delivering kind words, smiles, stickers, flowers, kindness cards, painted rocks and other goodies to strangers in our local area. It’s not as easy as you may think, we’ve all learned from this experience that some people are not open to receiving your Kindness just because you want to give it. Which presents a fantastic learning opportunity for both youth & adults. We discuss why people may not be open. And how that is okay, we must respect that. We have to learn to accept their refusal of our Kindness, maintain our happy heart and carry on. Learning to maintain inner balance and not letting others affect our internal happiness is a very important lesson. It is impressive to watch kids work through the rejection, gather up their self esteem, offer Kindness again, move on and make more impacts. It really takes courage and we are so very proud of our volunteers. They ask for it every year and we now all know to expect a few people to reject the Kindness, but the majority of people are genuinely surprised and deeply grateful to receive a simple gesture of Kindness.
One of the cool things about our volunteers is that we encourage all ages to join with us. To date we have had ages 4 – 76 serve with us. We enjoy mixing all aged volunteers together for great group experiences. Our nonprofit connects youth, families, individuals, local businesses, local government, and local nonprofits together to benefit all. A beautiful ripple effect that we are excited to continue.
As far as Jaida’s involvement, she is still homeschooled and is now 12 years old turning 13 in April. She helps make KIDS CARE’s decisions, planning, goes to meetings, creates social media, works extra hours before and after events, interacts with both the youth and the adults and is still absorbing the gift of giving while inspiring others to join her.
To sum up, we create youth community service experiences, encourage Kindness and raise awareness about our environment. We are a service learning nonprofit who aims to encourage volunteers of all ages to benefit from giving their time & compassion to our neighbors in need. We would love for people to know that we are trying our best to make an impact on our community’s needs, raise awareness about our environment and expand kindness. And we are always looking to connect with others who want to help us on our journey.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
First story that pops to mind about being resilient is when we were hosting an outdoor food drive. We had spent weeks organizing and promoting to collect non-perishable food from the public that we wanted to donate. We were all set to stand in the parking lot at our local high school and wait for people to drive by and drop off their donations. Well, when the date rolled up, so did the rain. A day or two before the collection it was predicted to rain and be cold for our outdoor food drive. We did not have a back up plan or an indoor space to turn to. We were a newer nonprofit and at that point we were happy to have permission to be in the school parking lot. We knew we did not want to cancel. So, we rented a big U-Haul, set up our tent at the end of it and continued on in the cold rain. We collected and delivered 3,111 non-perishable food items that were then given to local nonprofits feeding the homeless and food insecure in Cobb County.
That was not the first time we stood around in a parking lot. During covid we felt we had to do something. So we put out the ad that we would collect Kindness Cards for First Responders. We set it up so people could drive by & drop off the cards to us in different parking lot locations. Sometimes we sat there for two hours collecting nothing. Jaida would blow bubbles and we would draw on the pavement with chalk. Other times one car would roll by with a whole gallon sized Ziploc bag full of Kindness Cards. We did this for months. And at that time nobody really knew all the things about covid so we actually quarantined all the cards! All in all we collected 1,125 Handmade Kindness Cards for our Frontline workers during the first several months of covid. All the cards were delivered to nearby Hospital Staff, Fire, Police, EMS & 911 Dispatch Personnel.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Creating Kindness from our hearts to give to others is what drives us. Creating opportunities for others to join us and give from their heart is our mission. Our goal is to keep rippling Kindness out in small waves in the hopes and belief that it is reaching out farther than we know. We hope that the experiences that the youth & families share together will be lasting memories that they look back on fondly. With the added hope that those core memories inspire them to continue creating kindness throughout their adult lives as well. And finally, our love and passion for our Earth motivates us to keep tending to and spreading environmental awareness to all we cross paths with.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://kids-care2018.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kc2018org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kidscare2018
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/kids-care-2018
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/KIDSCARE2018
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@kidscare2018
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kidscare2018
Image Credits
Amie Burke, Co-Founder KIDS CARE Melissa Lathrop, Volunteer for KIDS CARE