Feb 11, 2013

It'll be me, all right.

So, oh, we're on?

Mm-hmm.

Oh.

Whenever you're ready. You can take as long as you want.

Hi, my name is Sally, and I'm here a part of the CRIS Kids team. CRIS is an acronym for Creativity, Honor, Respect, Integrity, and Safety, and we value all of those in our code of ethics here at CRIS Kids. Welcome to our page. We're so excited to have you here today. Thank you so much for joining us. We put together a list of needs, and this list has come from our staff, our team, our kids, and our families. And all and everything on this list is something that someone needs. So thank you for joining us. Please look and see how you can become a part of the Chris Kids team as well. As a donor, you know that if you buy a Band-Aid, When one little kid at one of our group homes scrapes his knee, you put that Band-Aid on his knee and you've helped heal that child that day.

Okay, so, so there, so the question is, okay, so give me an example of a Band-Aid, but am I buying a Band-Aid? I know you're saying you're using a metaphor, but you're being true, you know, it's true, but it's a— so what other examples would you have that you could give us? 'Cause a Band-Aid sounds like I'm gonna pay for one Band-Aid a little bit.

Oh, I could give you, when little Johnny's going through puberty, you provide the deodorant that keeps him full of hygiene and—

How about the dignity package as well? All the stuff we talked about, personal hygiene and things that match up with— 'Cause it's kind of a, and I'm gonna put words in your mouth, but what you're trying to do is be real, so be real is, kids come in here and they're stripped of these things that you may take for granted every day in your life, but when they come here they don't have that, and we have to restore some of that before we can start putting some other things in place, right? So it gives me this idea that we're restoring, we're bringing dignity, we're getting food, we're getting the basics, and then we're going to come in behind that and we do these wonderful things. I don't know what those are, but there's some process you go through here, right? I'm guessing. I don't know if that's what you want to talk about, but that's real to me. It brings it to life as a donor, and I go, okay, I get what they're doing.

So at Chris Kids, we try to bring dignity to each child and family that walks through our doors. And part of that, some of them, they walk in, they've never had the opportunity to live in a home before, and they've never gotten that real sense of being a part of something. And so they know when they walk in at Chris Kids, they're part of a family now. They get their own pair of sheets, they get their own stick of deodorant that they've never had before. They get to feel clean and safe at school and knowing that they can just be like everyone else and they can feel normal and a part of a group once again.

Okay, so with that, I get that. So what do you, like, what do I do? What do you need? Give me some ideas. So we need these items for hygiene, we need these items for this, we need these items, we have some wishlist items that we need like our van that we haven't replaced. You'll see all kinds of things below you and for $10, a minimum of $10, you can interface directly with the needs and you can share it with your friends. And so I go, okay.

So we have a list of needs, and we have, um, we have a lot of needs ranging from hygiene items such as deodorant that you can provide and ranging up to colored pencils and crayons so the kids in therapy can really express themselves and tell their therapist what they've been really going through, and they can finally tell their story in the way that makes sense to them. And so it's just one more step in the process of healing children, strengthening families, and building communities.

So why are you doing this to start with? And Beth talked about it too, but why are you doing this? Why not just let me— why can't I just give you cash? Why are you doing this?

As a donor, we're excited to provide this to you because you need a choice. This is you. You get to provide this one item to this child or however many items you would like, and you know that you provided that child with a gift that they truly need. And although we always accept cash and Visa and MasterCard, you know that when you buy that item, it's been shipped directly to the child and it directly helps them.

And what do you want me to do now?

I want you to take a look at our needs and get really excited about it because at Chris Kids, we're so excited! That's what I'd have.

It's good. I think it's really good.