WWW-Kylee’s Non-Profit Creates a Lifeline for kids
What an honor it is to bring you this selfless young lady, Kylee. She is wise beyond her years. She saw a need to help others struggling, brainstormed, and filled it. This particular mission hit close to home for her as she struggled with her own lack of food due to a parent’s addiction. She knew she wasn’t the only one feeling this insecurity. At a tender age of 10, she was driven to take matters in her own hands, and not just sit on the sidelines. We commend her for that !
Her grandmother, Lori is a friend from high school in my graduating class. She told me the story of what they’ve created together and I knew I wanted to help. Warrior Women Wednesdays are about celebrating those deserving individuals that have gone above and beyond ! I want to recognize these unique and loving females, and this one has started particularly young ! Please share and bring attention to this worthy Non-profit as we try to spread the word for them. Thanks !
1. How did Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kids begin ? What prompted this ?
My name is Kylee McCumber. I live in Leominster, MA. I am 18 years old and WAS a senior at The Winchendon School in Winchendon, MA until – just yesterday – went off to college at Bentley University ! In September of 2012, at the age of ten, I started Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz, Inc to help children who did not have enough food at home on the weekends. I had noticed that there were many children eating breakfast at my school each day and asked my grandmother why this was. We spoke with my school principal and began to research ways that we could help these children. We currently provide food every weekend for the children.
Each Friday the children receive a kare kit that includes cereal, juice, fruit cups, applesauce, pudding, macaroni & cheese, Chicken noodle soup, Chef Boyardee or Spaghettio products, granola bars, fruit snacks, peanut butter crackers…. The contents of the kare kits vary week to week depending upon what we can purchase on sale or what may have been donated that week.
My original goal was to support of family, friends and our community we are now providing food to almost 500 children on a weekly basis. This has been such a heart warming experience for me. Thank you to everyone who has helped me to help these children.
2. About Kylee McCumber:
Kylee is the founder of Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz, a member of the Kare Kits Team and is on the Board of Directors. She is 18 years old and just off to college at Bentley University. All through her time at The Winchendon School in Winchendon, MA she continued helping the kids. Kylee enjoys her work with Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz because she “would like to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry! It makes me feel good knowing that I am making a difference in the lives of children in our community. I also truly believe that it is so much better to give than to receive!”
I talked with my grandmother about it and we realized that some kids might not have enough to eat when they weren’t in school,” said the fifth-grader.
After doing some research, Kylee and her grandmother, Lori Bateman, learned that one in 10 children nationwide is food-insecure, meaning they do not have the security of knowing where their next meal is coming from.
“I don’t worry about where my next meal is coming from. Many children depend on the breakfast and lunch at school,” said Kylee.
Kylee and Ms. Bateman have worked on community service projects together before, including Leominsterveterans care packages and fostering NEADS dogs, so they put their heads together and came up with Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz.
Kylee is also a Fellow with the Boston based non-profit Peace First, is a Service Learning Leader at the Winchendon School and leads a group of students at the school to fight for food justice. In addition to her service with Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz she enjoys going on service missions to help others and has traveled to the Philippines, India, France, the Dominican Republic and Houston, Texas. She works part time at Market Basket in Leominster. Kylee has a six year old sister Paige and lives in Leominster with her grandparents Lori & Bill Bateman
3. About Lori Bateman ( Kylee’s grandmother ):
Lori is the President, Executive Director and an Adult Krew member of Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz. “I like to volunteer with Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz because I enjoy helping children and families in need within the community. I am ashamed to admit that I had not been aware of depth of the food insecure children within our community until my granddaughter, Kylee, brought it to my attention. Since then I have supported Kylee in her mission to ensure that no child goes to bed hungry. This journey has been truly amazing and we have received so much more in return than what we have given.” Lori lives in Leominster with her husband Bill and granddaughter Kylee.
4. Attracting Attention- Newpapers & Television:
Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz gets national attention, goes viral ! Sentinel and Enterprise
By MONICA BUSCH | mbusch@sentinelandenterprise.com | Sentinel & EnterprisePUBLISHED: December 29, 2019 at 6:13 a.m. | UPDATED: December 30, 2019 at 8:47 a.m.
Over the course of the last eight years, Kylee McCumber’s eponymous nonprofit, Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz, has become a household name in North Central Massachusetts. But this holiday season, the organization, which fights food insecurity in and around Leominster, received national recognition when a video about the group went viral on social media.
The video, which details the Kare Kits origin story, began as a segment on Boston’s WCVB, Channel 5. That video, McCumber explained, first aired during the last week of November.
“We’ve had many different people send donations, which are wonderful,” McCumber said on Thursday. “We’ve had quite a few people sign up to our PayPal to do monthly donations, so it’s wonderful, the support we’ve gotten from this video that kind of took the internet by storm around the holidays.”
A Stint on television
“And then Antoinette (Antonio), the lady that led that story, reached out to us and said that it was picked up nationally and that another video would kind of be put together,” McCumber said, explaining that the new video was intended to be more internet-friendly. That video was produced and shared by A Plus, a digital media company founded by actor Ashton Kutcher. The company, according to its website, puts a particular emphasis on sharing positive news stories, and especially those that show people making a positive impact on the world around them.
Like the WCVB video, the A Plus clip recounted McCumber’s journey as, first, a young child experiencing food insecurity, all the way up to where she is now, at 18 years old, helping to lead Kare Kits and providing free meals to area schoolchildren over the weekends and when school is not in session.
While many people run charities and other nonprofits, the details of McCumber’s adolescence are striking. When McCumber was in kindergarten, her mother developed a drug addiction, and because of that addiction, she often opted to spend her money on things other than food for her daughter, according to McCumber.
For a while, McCumber hid the problem from other adults in her life, often going as many as three days in a row without food. It wasn’t until she was 10 years old and living with her grandmother, Lori Bateman, that McCumber realized that the food insecurity problems she faced were a common problem among her peers.
And so, Kylee’s Kare Kits for Kidz was born, initially providing 10 children a week with food to eat over the weekends, when free and reduced school meals are not available.
Now in its eighth year, the organization has about 30 regular volunteers and serves more than 596 area children.
As of Thursday afternoon, the A Plus video had been viewed more than 120,000 times and was even shared to Kutcher’s personal public page.
The response, McCumber said, has been huge.
“And I think we figured (it would air in) Massachusetts and that’s perfect, great, that’s our home, that’s where people know about us and about what we do,” McCumber said. “But now that it spread we’re like, Wow, this is crazy — people actually know about us and are donating and supporting us.”
But while she and others have been taken aback by the positive response, they’re still focused on the work that needs to be done. Aside from meals, this holiday season they also ran a gift drive, providing a little over 300 children with Christmas presents, she said. And in just a few days, school will be back in session and their regular food distribution schedule will resume once again.
“A huge thank you to everyone who has been supporting us, whether continuously over the eight years or have started to support us more recently,” McCumber said. “We would not be able to do it without our community.”
5. It Takes a Village ! Kylee’s team:
6. How can we donate or help this wonderful cause ?
http://www.kyleeskarekitsforkidz.org
Email: kyleeskarekitsforkidz1@gmail.com
7. Events coming up for the kids: Back to School !
Every August we hold our annual drive to collect backpacks and school supplies for the children. We collect backpacks, notebooks, composition books, packets of paper, folders, binders, pencils, pens, crayons, markers, colored pencils, rulers, scissors, erasers and highlighters. We welcome donations of backpacks for ages pre-k through high school, supplies or monetary donations with which we purchase supplies for the children. If you are interested in helping with this drive or with the Kare Kits, feel free to contact us through our Facebook page or our email at kyleeskarekitsforkidz1@gmail.com.
If you have a story of someone that absolutely should be told, please comment below. I am doing these blog posts on the last Wednesday of the month. We need to showcase these individuals that have looked outside themselves and truly made a difference. Isn’t that why we’re here in the first place ?
