Today I decided to stop thinking and start doing. My name is Rachael and I am a Junior in high school. I've spent the last three years thinking, planning and brainstorming ways to create a charity organization. However, being only 16, I knew that this would be near impossible to achieve a license to accept donated money (especially when I had no idea what I was going to do with that money after I got it). My original intent was to raise money to help out families who couldn't afford the chemo treatment for their cancer-sick family member. I thought of the name "The John Bracker Foundation" in honor of my father who died in 2008 from esophageal cancer. After looking into this, I soon discovered how difficult it would be to seek out these families, and I also remembered my family during this time and how we didn't want help from anyone, let alone a complete stranger. The resources I would need to be able to do this would have to span across states, and as of right now, I am unable to frivolously have that kind of money to spend. But that's the past, this blog is about TODAY! And today I was lying in bed being my lazy self (not really, my schedule is crazy!) watching movies off of my iPad and drifting in and out of sleep in my comfortable bed with my silk sheets, avoiding my essay I need to write for my English class that I knew I would need to get up and research and write on our enormous Mac computer in my brother's room with the HUGE four poster bed and one of our two plasma screen TVs. And as I glanced at the time on my BlackBerry and sifted through my music list on my iPod Touch, worrying about if I needed to fill up the gas tank in MY car, it hit me. We live off Social Security and have been fighting to make ends meet for years before my father even passed, but his sickness only made our debt worse. We have to worry about groceries and pray that no one needs medical care since we can only afford the basic healthcare. We shop at GoodWill for our clothes when we have no money, but otherwise we conform and spend $30-$40 on a shirt at a department store. We can barely afford to pay our bills and mostly dip into our savings, yet we live like those in the city around us, rich. I've gone to a public school all three years of high school so far, but you would almost think it was a prep school. Kids don't care about clothes, shoes, or hair, they care how much you paid for it. They dress in the latest fashions, literally drive sports cars (I kid you not!) to school, carry designer purses to each class (God knows why) and instead of doing school work, they sit at their desks and apply makeup or gossip about all the fun parties of the weekend before or the weekend to come. And I don't blame them for being snobby or stuck up, I blame their parents, because, the truth is, even though we're scraping for food, we somehow managed to land our butts in Saburbaville! The entire town is ritzy and expensive. Much more up-to-do then the small town I grew up in and lived for thirteen years of my life. So, I decided to do some research, I looked for homeless shelters, soup kitchens, donation spots, and halfway houses in my city. Guess how many I found? You nailed it! A big, whopping ZERO! Apparently my rich, fancy shmancy city is too good to help the homeless. So it struck me. The cities surrounding us have numerous homeless shelters, soup kitchens, etc., who are dying for help. And who better to help but me? I figured I live in a town where everyone is overflowing with money, and meanwhile the little person is suffering due to the terrible economy. So, why not collect donations (food, clothes, etc.) from the people in my city, and take them to the poorer cities that need them? So, today, I started a blog, named it after my father (the greatest person to ever live) in honor of his selfless attitude and his giving manor which he portrayed upon all, and I am going to make sure that every needy has a pillow to sleep on, a blanket to keep them warm, food in their stomach, and clothes on their back, things we take for granted, and they don't even dare to dream about.
-Rachael
