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Uplift Austin Go Fund Me

Hello, my name is Ethan Williams. I founded a non-profit organization, Uplift Austin, with my good friend, Katie Karp, in February of last year. We are incoming seniors at the University of Texas at Austin studying public health and journalism, respectively. During last year's horrific winter storm in February, Katie raised money via Go Fund Me to purchase blankets and other necessities so that we could distribute the items to the homeless around Lady Bird Lake.

It was a surreal experience. Katie and I spoke and interacted with many of these homeless people camped out in this area. During that winter storm, most of us dealt with a lack of electricity and/or water, and admittedly that wasn't good. However, to not having basic shelter in those frigid temperatures was unimaginable for most Texans. So often, we overlook the things we have and forget about those that don’t have anything. In the critically acclaimed 2019 movie “Parasite,” there is a heavy rainstorm that causes a flood that displaces many of the cities’ marginalized low-income population. While the marginalized view the storm as a destructive, disruptive force, the wealthy in the most elevated city continue with their lives and see the storm as an opportunity to celebrate Spring. There is no malice among the celebrants. Their viewpoint, however, clearly paints the vastly different perspective that humans across many other socio-economic groups have, including now stress-induced lack of empathy and emotional fatigue. During the snowstorm, most Austinites were excited to expect snow; however, to Austin’s homeless population the snow brought about trauma and a plethora of other problems. I started Uplift Austin with Katie because we wanted to energize and rejuvenate young people into doing work that could better help Austin’s most vulnerable population.

Uplift Austin has been an official 501c3 for almost over a year, and it's amazing to look back on all the things we were able to accomplish. In this past school year, we’ve had over a dozen events giving out food to the homeless population of Austin, along with shoe drives and blanket drives. One of our biggest events this past year was giving 183 pairs of shoes to students at Pickle Elementary School. We are extremely enthusiastic about continuing to help the homeless and underprivileged population this school year and expanding our outreach in the city of Austin. This next year, we can plan on conducting a plethora of philanthropy events such as Sunday food drives, blanket, book, and sock drives. Any bit of money donated will help us tremendously in helping bolster our outreach and philanthropic events for the year. Donations in any amount will truly help as it will give us the ability to offer Austin’s homeless and underpriveleged populations more resources.

Organizer

Ethan Williams
Organizer
Austin, TX
Austin Uplift
 
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.

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