If you've ever thought you would like to help children, but don't have a lot of time on your hands, there's a way to do it without a huge amount of effort. Lizzy Allison, a 17 year old from Sacramento was in the musical Annie when she was in elementary school and it made her start thinking about children who aren't able to live with their parents. Flash forward a few years later to when she was a freshman in high school, and started a "birthday in a box" program for local foster kids. The idea is to make sure children get a birthday party. She did it solo , but then enlisted the help of other teenagers.
"Because the average foster kid has never celebrated a birthday. I started the goal of celebrating all the local foster kids in my area, and we recently just partnered with "Ticket to Dream, which is a national non-profit, and together we are creating opportunity for kids across America to create birthday boxes for foster kids. So now we are a nationwide non-profit."
In the last year and a half they've put together birthday boxes for about 500 foster kids. Those boxes have plates, napkins, balloons, cake mix, and frosting, hand made birthday cards---pretty much everything you need to throw a party. Allison says there are over 74 million kids in the U.S, and all of them have the potential to be leaders and to help out others...sometimes they just need to be given the opportunity.