I love blankets. I'm just going to put that out there from the start. I absolutely love them. So much so that I have three blankets on my bed currently...in Hawaii. That's right, I'll keep my room extra cold so that I can snuggle up with three blankets. This is my favorite American comfort. And it's just that, it's a comfort. All around the northern hemisphere the temperatures are dropping right now as winter is coming. That means people from all walks of life are all reaching for the same thing: warm clothes. But what isn't the same all around, is how accessible those warm clothes are. For me, it's easy. I know at any point I will go home to three warm blankets on my bed. At no time during the day do I question or worry about how I'm going to stay warm. But for a family living in the slums, a family that lives in what we would call a tin shack, it's a whole other story.
How do you stay warm without a jacket? Or how do you get a good night’s sleep when you're trying to keep warm the entire night? I think most people have shown up to an event of some kind and didn't prepare properly for the weather that was happening. Maybe it meant going to a sporting event outside, and not realizing how cold it would actually be sitting there for some time. Most of the time someone else offers something that they have to help. An extra jacket, a blanket, some hand warmers...whatever it may be. But a lot of the time the day/experience/event was saved because someone else offered to help. That's what Hands 4 Zero Poverty (H4ZP) did when we created a Clothes Distribution in one of the local slums in India.
While word of the clothes distribution got sent out to the families in the slum, Hands 4 Zero Poverty went out into Northern Delhi to collect the materials for the distribution. This was a journey in itself. The team traveled an hour and thirty minutes, one way, in order to go to the market with the best prices in India, which would allow us to maximize the available budget. With a budget of $350 USD, the team collected 100 sweaters, 100 socks, 100 caps, and 100 blankets. The hardest part was the transporting of the blankets, as the estimation for the volume and weight of them was off. However, when we saw all 100 blankets go into the arms of thankful mothers, with their children alongside, expressing gratitude for such a simple thing, it made it all worth it. While it was hard to get the blankets back, harder than we expected, it wasn't much in comparison to the women and children, who 95% of them, walked barefoot through the slum in order to finally have access to warm materials. But on this day, no men came, it was just women and their children whose ages ranged from two to six years old. Each kid was given a sweater, cap, and socks. And then each mother was given a blanket. For two hours the team held one of the most successful campaigns to date. The crowd was much easier than when the food distributions took place. This time the families were asked to sit on the floor and one by one would come up to receive their items.
Out of the gathered families, one mother, that came up with six children, was recognized from being at Hands 4 Zero Poverty's first-ever food distribution three years ago. Which was a wonderful way to end the event, by seeing the kids look much better than what they had the previous time and knowing that although it may seem that our reach is small it can lead to great things. Let this be a reminder the next time you forget a warm jacket and someone saves the day by letting you borrow one, a small act of kindness can have huge impacts.
