Paying it forward
Nooreen's grandfather came to the US from India 55 years ago and worked hard to fulfill the American dream; he passed away 14 years ago. Recently, when her grandmother decided to downsize, they had to figure out what to do with the furniture her grandparents had bought through their hard work and that held so many family memories. Noreen thought to herself how wonderful it would be to donate it to another family starting their American journey. She happened to see a KindWorks post about our refugee apartment setups. "My grandfather was a man of values," Noreen told me, "he was all about doing good, in practice, and we saw it through the way he lived his life." It doesn't matter how much you have, he'd say, you have to think of others. Last week, their family's bedroom set, dressers, night table, mirror and more went to two refugee families, one from Afghanistan and another from Ethiopia. Alexa shared photos of the furniture set up in the new homes. Noreen's grandmother had tears in her eyes. "My grandfather's soul is happy," Noreen said. While KindWorks is not setting up full apartments like we were doing before the pandemic, our team is continuing to help through such donations. "There is such a desperation," Alexa says, "like I've never seen before. It's been really really hard not to be able to do more." "You've done us a favor," Noreen told me, "we're feeling very humbled."