Faces of Philanthropy - An Interview with Lexi Kelley

Tell us about yourself:

I am 12 years old, will be in 7th grade at St. Lukes School and live in Stamford. I was born in Singapore and lived in Asia until I was 5. I love to listen to music, enjoy dancing, spending time outdoors, being with my friends and playing sports, especially skiing and karate. I am currently working on getting my brown belt and hopefully soon my black belt.

What is Kids Helping Kids? How did you start?

Kids Helping Kids is an organization that I started with my mom in June 2009. We decided to start it because I really like doing things to help other people. Ever since Kindergarten I have enjoyed community service projects. I have had many lemonade, bracelet and brownie stands with my friends and then we give the money to a local charity. One of my favorite things we do is our annual Thanksgiving bread bake where we make over 160 breads in our kitchen and sell them to friends, family, and at church. We have raised over $7000 in the past six years. Every year we get more and more people involved so I thought it would be a great idea to create a group of children (all ages) that could participate in projects and events and together make more of an impact.

Recently we read a picture book called “Looking to the Clouds for Daddy.” It’s about three children who’ve lost their father and are trying to deal with their grief and loss. It’s a beautiful book. We decided that we should try to get as many of these books as possible into the hands of kids who’ve lost a parent in their lives. I knew about the Den for Grieving Kids and thought they would really like these books to give out to the kids that go there.

We live in a great community that seems to feel as strongly about helping others as we do. We met some amazing people at New Balance New Canaan, and they said, “What about a relay race for charity? We’ll help.” Next, we received financial support from First County Bank and Salon 126 of New Canaan.

So we had sponsors, New Balance, First County Bank and Salon 126 and a group of friends who created a logo, a theme and a great name: Remembering One Relay. Local businesses like Joe’s Pizza, Walter Stewarts, Threads and Treads, Schenkel Carpets, iblast, Stepping Stones and Alamode Ice Cream provided food and support on the day of the race. Our DJ inspired the crowd and the runners with great music all night long. The children at Horizons made dozens of beautiful decorated batons that we used for the relay races.

Friends, family and people from several towns came to the New Canaan High School track on July 9th at 6 pm. We ran several “heats” of relay races and laughed and enjoyed seeing runners as young as 3 compete with older runners.

Everyone who completed the relay got a medal and a goody bag filled with gifts from our sponsors. There was some dancing, a limbo game and lots of running and playing. This year we put it together in less than a month so next year, I am certain it will be even more successful!

At the end of the night, a young girl named Faith asked shyly if we were going to need the extra gift bags. It turns out she’s going to India soon to work with lepers who have been separated from society. We were thrilled to send the remaining gift bags with her on her humanitarian mission. So the good work continues.

The future?

As for me, we are already planning the second annual “Remembering One Relay”. We also have Salon 126 sponsoring a “Cuts for a Cause” day in the salon. We will be offering haircuts for the whole family at a discounted rate and all money will go to Locks for Love. Start growing your hair because if it is 10” or longer you will be able to donate your hair for this cause. For the last two months, New Balance, New Canaan generously offered to support “Share your old shoes” where anybody can drop off shoe donations at their store. We pick them up every 2 weeks and donate them the Norwalk emergency shelter, as they never have enough shoes for those in need. So far we have collected over 120 shoes for the Shelter!

We are now working on a list of additional projects for the year. We are going to partner with William Pitt Child Care Learning Center and read to their youngsters. We are developing a children’s clothing drive in Nicaragua, where one of the Kids Helping Kids volunteers visits yearly. Providing clean water to all children of the world is of interest to us, so we are starting to research how we can help in that area. We also want to do a Move for Money event but we are still working on how we can do that.

If you want to know more about Kids Helping Kids or want to join please check out our website: www.ctkidshelpingkids.org. Hope you will come and share your ideas about new projects that we could do to help other kids.