Stories

The community garden is becoming real. We had 12 cubic yards of organic soil delivered on Saturday, and 25 volunteers showed up to start building raised beds. People brought their kids. Someone brought a speaker and played music. Mrs. Patterson from down the block brought enough tamales for everyone.

We've built 15 of our planned 40 beds so far. The irrigation system parts are ordered and should arrive next week.

With $720 raised of our $800 goal, we're almost there. Just need a little more for the tool shed and the last batch of seeds.

This garden is already growing something more important than vegetables — it's growing a neighborhood that believes in itself again.

I finished my first round of chemotherapy on Thursday. It was hard — I won't pretend otherwise. But I'm here, I'm fighting, and your support made it possible.

Thanks to 47 anonymous gifts totaling $3,400, I was able to afford all my medications this month AND keep Lily in her after-school art program. She came home yesterday with a painting of "Mama being brave" and I completely lost it in the best way.

My next round starts in two weeks. The doctors say my response to treatment is "encouraging." I'm holding onto that word.

Thank you for being the invisible army behind us. You'll never know how many times I've looked at the donation notifications and cried happy tears.

We did it. The emergency tarping crew came out yesterday and our house is finally waterproof again. No more buckets catching drips at 3am. No more worrying every time it rains.

The $2,000 milestone was reached thanks to 31 anonymous donors. I still can't wrap my head around the fact that 31 people we've never met cared enough to help.

The contractor says the full roof repair can start as soon as we hit the next milestone. We're $3,000 away from getting a real roof over our heads again.

Diana wanted me to add: "Tell them we pray for them every night, even though we don't know their names."

It's official. I'm enrolled for fall semester at State University. When I opened the enrollment confirmation email, I screamed so loud my mom came running from the kitchen thinking something was wrong.

Something was very right.

I've registered for Biology 101, English Composition, Introduction to Health Sciences, and Statistics. My advisor says I'm on track for the nursing program's pre-requisites.

We're 12% of the way to the first semester goal. Every gift that comes in is another day of tuition covered, another textbook I won't have to choose between buying and eating.

I promise I will make every single dollar count. And four years from now, when I'm a nurse at Detroit Children's Hospital, I will remember every anonymous person who believed in me before I proved anything.

We did it. All 40 children at the shelter now have a brand-new winter coat, gloves, and hat.

The fitting day was one of the most beautiful things I've witnessed in 15 years of running this shelter. Kids who usually keep their heads down were spinning around in front of the mirror, showing off their new coats to each other. One girl, age 9, chose a bright red coat and said "I've never had something this nice that was just for me."

To the 34 anonymous donors who made this possible: you didn't just buy coats. You gave 40 children the experience of being chosen, cared for, and seen.

This campaign is now complete. Every dollar was spent, every child is warm, and every family in our shelter knows that strangers out there care about them.