3 summers ago, I had the pleasure of working at Family Promise of Western New York, a shelter for families as they search for permanent housing. I worked with two other coordinators to help plan and run a summer camp for the kids in the shelter, which ended up being one of the most impactful and enjoyable experiences of my lifetime. My appreciation and respect for the work that the people at Family Promise did as well as my love for my hometown of Buffalo in general grew exponentially.

After 8 weeks of working in the city proper, I learned an incredible amount about what differences can be present within a few mile radius of any given place. In a city that had treated me so kindly for the 19 years I'd lived there up until that point, it was striking to see how much inequity there was just a few blocks away.

Just one month before I started working at the shelter, a gunman went to a local Tops supermarket and killed 10 people, making national news and simultaneously showing how powerful a community can be in the aftermath of a shared tragedy. His motives were racially motivated, searching out historically black neighborhoods for his attack. This supermarket was one of the only available food stores in the area, and was the same one that families from Family Promise would be taken too regularly for their groceries. Families in certain areas of the city are unfairly subjected to differing levels of financial and social inequalities that make housing, medical care, childcare and many other services much harder to find.

Family Promise is one of the leading organizations in Buffalo helping to combat these issues. It operates with a mission that is unique from many other shelters throughout the country: keeping the entire family together while in the shelter. Many shelters do not allow the adult male members of the family to remain in the house, while Family Promise aims to provide a home for every person in the family who needs a place to stay. This effort to create a holistic community is what made me so impressed and honored to be a part of their organization for that summer. The staff were some of the most dedicated and hard-working people I’ve met, making my job as the camp counselor easier while simultaneously running the entire home and helping families to find permanent housing in the area. In addition, they provide yearly reunions where past families can come back to enjoy time with everyone at Family Promise again. I’ve always been incredibly proud to be from Buffalo, but this community of people working to help one another is what made me understand why Buffalo is considered the “City of Good Neighbors”.

In the hopes of giving back to the place that helps my hometown in such a magnificent way, I invite anyone who is willing to help contribute to this page in order to raise some money for the families that are currently living at the house. As someone who worked with the shelter’s budget in planning our summer camp activities, I am acutely aware of how impactful a few extra dollars can be. Anything is appreciated!

In order to drum up some excitement for the event, I’m stealing an idea that my friend Matt Long, a Dunne Hall-of-Famer, used the last few years in order to raise money for his own charity of choice, the Lustgarten Pancreatic Cancer Research Foundation in honor of his Grandfather (link to his GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/2024-mlpc-pottery-marathon-for-pancreatic-cancer-research). I will be spending 24 hours straight, from 3:00 PM on Friday, March 28th until 3:00 PM on Saturday, March 29th crocheting beanies in the 3rd floor lounge of my dorm. If you’re around, please feel free to stop by and cheer me on and I can teach you how to crochet or knit!

For those who donate to this GoFundMe, you will be entered into a chance to win one of the many beanies that I’ll be making. Due to the nature of me being a broke college kid and all of the funds going to charity, I will ask that all shipping costs please be covered by those that win. But if you have someone you know in Dunne then let me know and I can give it to them to deliver it to you in person when they come back home!

And please follow along at the following Instagram page on the Day of Crochet (March 28th-29th), I’ll be posting updates and tutorials on how to crochet your very own beanie!

Instagram: crochet_day_for_charitay

Thank you so much for your support, and please share this link with anyone you think might be interested in donating and winning a handmade beanie!