When it comes to doing acts of kindness and helping others, age is no factor as proved by a 6-year-old girl who is on a mission to help the homeless in her hometown.
Bethany Moultry’s mission is to help people without homes since last December when the two were running errands in Savannah, Georgia according to her mother Colleen Moultry.
The beginning
It all started when Bethany saw a man standing on the side of the road with a sign asking for help. “It broke my heart because she was crying in the backseat,” Moultry said. “She asked if she could break open her piggy bank and give him all her money.”
“I’m so proud of her,” Bethany’s mom Colleen Moultry said. She said to her then 5-year-old daughter that there might be other ways to help him, and together they came up with “happy bags” which they would fill with essential items and hand out to homeless people in their community.
Happy Bags
A happy bag contains socks, two masks, Band-Aids, antibiotic ointment, and body wipes, a cup of fruit, protein and a drink. “We could’ve just given a donation to an organization, but with her being a child, I wanted to give her a tangible way to help others where she could see and understand who and how she was helping,” Moultry said.
Moultry said Bethany was so excited about the project that when asked what she wanted on her sixth birthday, she said more supplies for her “happy bags.” She added, “I did not expect her to say that. I was expecting a new bike or a big dollhouse. It really surprised me,” Moultry said. “At that point, I knew I needed to find a way to make that happen.”
Dream is now a reality
“They don’t have a home or have a lot of stuff,” Bethany said. “It makes me feel happy and feel good to help other people.”
Soon the word was spreading like wildfire and Bethany got more supplies funded through an Amazon wish list. Even the local schools like her brother’s school, the Matthew Reardon Center for Autism, also helped get the bags together, and Moultry said they got together with homeless organizations and the police department to help give out the bags. Bethany has distributed over 750 bags till date.
“I’m so proud of her, I don’t even know if I can put it into words,” Moultry said. “I think sometimes it’s easy to look the other way when you see a difficult situation. It took my 5-year-old to point it out to me. If she was aware enough to see this, I wanted to come up with another way to help.”
Building the community
Bethany’s goal is to build tiny homes for homeless people in her community and hopes to reach out to other communities and educate people on homelessness and how they can help. Moultry says that helping the homeless people with job training and other services is what they are exploring next. “Seeing the amount of people she’s helped — I don’t think I ever could’ve imaged that it would turn into what it’s turned into,” Moultry said. “I’m just proud. Proud mama over here.”
