What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night, wondering how you could help children in need during the holidays? You didn't want to help just one child, your desire was to help as many as you could. Your budget is limited but somehow you feel you could do more than a single donation.
That's just what happened to local Realtor Rob Corcoran and owner of Influence Real Estate. After taking is own children for a ride on Heber Valley Railroad's North Pole Express last year, and seeing how much his children enjoyed the experience, he thought it would be a grand idea to take some underprivileged kids for a ride on the train. Sounds simple enough, right?… But, how to choose who goes?
With the help of the Salt Lake County Education Foundation, he decided to spearhead a project to take the children, of one of Salt Lake's underprivileged schools. Rob didn't want to take just one class, or even one grade so, he decided to dream big and began a plan to take the entire school of 400+ students, grades 1-6 for the experience of their life.
It's gets better. On December 17, while the students are riding the North Pole Express, volunteer elves will makeover the school gym into Santa's workshop. When the kids return each student will receive a wrapped gift from Old St. Nick himself. Can you imagine the memories, hopes and dreams that will be created with this one act of kindness? Folks, some of the kids that attend this school are homeless and most are in families that are facing financial hardships.
Soon after Rob set out to fulfill this monstrous goal, he gained support of some local businesses. Jimmy Johns and Harmon’s stepped up with some donations of food to feed the kids. EnergySolutions will outfit them with donated scarves and gloves and those very scarves and gloves will be put into donated backpacks from the Advent Group.
Because of your support with Hands 4 Helping, Coupons4Utah was able to make a donation of $200.00 (the remainder of October's budget) towards making this project happen. 100% of all donations go to support the event and if, by chance, they go over, the rest will be used to purchase niceties for the kids, like coats and shoes.
Isn't it amazing what a midnight dream can do?!
You can read more on how our Hands 4 Helping is working on this post here.
Leave a Reply