A Kentucky-based non-profit makes a trip to Smith Elementary today with a mission of generosity in mind.
4 Good Community’s mobile school program facilitates donations and brings items gathered to participating schools, where students get the chance to pick one item for themselves and another to give to a loved one.
The program has made stops in Indiana at schools in Evansville and Mount Vernon, but also in Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois, and North Dakota.
The idea is to “plant the seeds of generosity within our youth,” before they go on to become the leaders of the future, 4 Good Community Outreach Director Addison Hearrin told The Republic.
The non-profit essentially provides the items and then it’s left to the schools to staff the event with volunteers.
Hearrin had reached out to BCSC Director of Elementary Instruction Laura Hack about potentially coming to a BCSC school.
“I listened to them and I thought is this the real deal? It sounds too good to be true,” said Hack, who identified Smith as an opportune place for the program to visit. “There’s some opportunities in that small pocket of our community for students to shine and for students to receive some blessings.”
“I reached out to tons of schools,” Hearrin said. “But it really takes some special schools to put in the effort to want to support your kids like that.”
4 Good Community collects the items in several ways. Hearrin mentioned partnerships the organization has with an Amazon Warehouse in Fargo, North Dakota that is providing the items today and another with non-profit Soles4Souls.
A quick perusual of 4 Good Community’s website under their school outreach section shows students proudly beaming while posing with a violin, Funko Pops, a mirror, a baby swing, and a foot stool to name a few.
Conversations began with staff at Smith, where Title One teacher Carmella Musillami took the lead in putting the logistics of the event together.
Musillami and other organizers then involved C4 Director Gene Hack who plans to send 15 to 20 C4 student ambassadors to lend a hand.
“Gene Hack has gotten me the volunteers and then I’ve been the one to organize the who, what, where, when and why,” Musillami said.
At 8:30 a.m. big box trucks filled with pallets of toys, clothing and home goods will arrive— Hearrin said there will be about 1,500 items in all.
Students will be brought into the school’s gym in 30 minute increments to claim their items.
The older students will assist in unloading the pallets, stocking the tables and helping the Smith students “shop.”
“It’s giving them an opportunity to do some service work,” Musillami said of the C4 student ambassadors. “And then later in the morning, they’re going to have their own little leadership activity for those students to do up in our school library.”
Staff and volunteers will sort out what the students choose and set up plans for pick up later in the evening for larger items.
Musillami said she’s excited for the students to have a memorable time and come away with feelings generated when doing something for others.
“Generosity doesn’t always come in big packages, Musillami said. “We want them to know generosity is really just the act of caring about somone else, giving to somebody else because it comes from your heart.”
There will also be a delivery option the next day, according to Musillami.
“Everything that comes, stays within our school, so nothing actually gets sent back,” Musillami said. “Our plan is anything left over, we will find families within our school who are in need and get those items to families who could benefit from them.”
In addition to the mobile school program, 4 Good Community also engages in disaster relief, a mobile relief program called “4 Good on the GO” and has four separate locations, called “Kids’ for Good Centers,” that provide resources for children.
The mobile school program began a couple of years ago visiting about two schools per month and grew from there, Hearrin said.
“And as soon as we started doing a few of them, other schools started to hear about it. And then we basically did one school every Wednesday last year, and this year we have a school every single day.”
Hearrin recalled when they were visiting schools hit hard by floods in eastern Kentucky in 2022 and noticed how much the ability to gift simple things meant to the students.
“These were kids that really had not even a mattress, were sleeping in moldy trailers. They had just lost siblings, they had lost parents,” Hearrin said. “… There’s times where (an adult) will be like, ‘Oh no kid’s going to want that,’ and then a kid comes in and has a big smile on their face because they want a vacuum or they want this or that, because they just think a lot differently than we do.”
Hearrin remembered another instance where a kid was thrilled he had acquired a toilet seat after noticing one at his grandma’s house was broken.
“Sometimes we kind of stand in their way of the creativity of what they can do with a lot of these products and who they can help, they’re just so creative,” Hearrin said.
Laura Hack said they may look to do the same at other BCSC schools in the future.
“I think it’s important that we all realize we’re part of something bigger than us,” she said. “And so whenever we realize that and then we can start giving back, more things come to us.”
