Community-minded Birthday Girl Brings Joy to the Needy

Last week, HSP was delighted to receive both a visit and donation from local twelve-year-old Emily Giovingo. For her recent birthday, Emily asked her guests, not for a gift for herself, but for gifts to go to the needy children in our Children’s Birthday Project. Emily sure must be popular, because the donations from her party filled 4 boxes and 1 very large bag of new gifts including games, activity sets, and books. We want to thank Emily and her friends for these gifts, which will become part of the 20-25 lb “birthday box” each of the 888 needy children in our project receive. These boxes contain 4 to 8 new toys, 5-7 new books, school supplies, numerous smaller gifts, and a “party in a bag” which contains all the necessary supplies for a memorable birthday party.

Emily is part of “The Community Girlz,” a local, charitable club she has formed with seven of her friends. According to Emily’s mother Sharon Giovingo, these eight seventh graders run the organization almost completely independent of parental help. On top of donations like this one Emily organized for her 12^th birthday, The Community Girlz biggest event is an annual fundraising fair. For this fair, the girls host activities, and sell crafts and baked goods to raise money for local charities. In the past three years that the girls have run the fair, they have raised over $2500 for the charities they support!

The Community Girls: Emily, Donna, Tam, Lydia, Jessica, Abigail, Kelly and Sharielle

Here at HSP, we think it’s fantastic to see young people so engaged in helping the needy of the community. We, again, want to thank Emily and her friends for donating greatly needed toys for the sake of the impoverished children served by our Children’s Birthday Project, and we wish her and the Community Girlz continued success in their efforts to support local charities.