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This is a cause near and dear to my heart…providing birthday parties for homeless children! That’t the mission of Birthday Wishes based in Boston, MA. It was great to learn about this organization one Friday night on NBC’s Nightly News Making a Difference segment.
From the site, Birthday Wishes recognizes the importance of a birthday in a child’s life and believes that the gift of a birthday celebration provides normalcy, joy and hope in these children’s otherwise unsettled lives. Currently, Birthday Wishes works with over 75 shelters in MA and Rhode Island and also has a presence in 4 other cities. And the movement is growing!
A top trend in kids’ parties today is to often request donations in lieu of party gifts. Birthday Wishes is a wonderful organization to collect donations for and be a Birthday Pal. Alternatively, you can collect the birthday gifts and make an in-kind donation to Birthday Wishes to make a homeless child’s birthday dreams come true.
Love this birthday party idea from the site:
Throw a Birthday Wishes Birthday Party! an impressively growing number of young people are choosing to support Birthday Wishes as the “theme” of their birthday parties. We provide a template invitation, which invites all attendees to bring an item for Birthday Wishes to the party (this is done either in lieu of or in addition to gifts for the birthday child – its up to you). When you bring in your items from the party we’ll take a picture of the birthday child w/ their donations for our newsletter. This is an activity, which our future philanthropists can really relate to!
You can download an invitaiton and a thank you card too.
There are also so many other ways that you can volunteer to help Birthday Wishes. Speaking of volunteers, Lisa Vasiloff, the organiation’s Executive Director, said that she is most proud of the fact that 65% of their volunteers running the parties are kids. What an engaged community! This may also interest your child as all of the parties are run by volunteers!
All children deserve to be celebrated on their special day! Yeah for Birthday Wishes Mission!
