AAPS: More than 300 students from 12 schools volunteered in ‘Anna’s Kindness’ projects
AAPS students didn’t let COVID-19 stop them from helping others in need.
Students continued volunteering through Anna’s Kindness—a public charity established in 2017 in memory of 12-year-old Forsythe Middle School student Anna LeFort, who passed away following a short illness.
Anna’s Kindness connects middle school students with hands-on, on-site opportunities to serve others in need.
The LeFort family reports that Anna’s Kindness hosted 28 volunteer opportunities this school year, involving more than 300 Ann Arbor students from a dozen Ann Arbor schools.
The events ranged from serving Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless, dancing the night away with special needs prom guests, playing baseball with disabled children, and spending quality kitty time with cats suffering from leukemia.
Forsythe 7th grader Noah Silkworth runs the basepaths with his special needs ‘buddy’ during a Miracle League baseball game in Plymouth.
Student volunteers cared for foster care dogs, made holiday crafts with nursing home residents, wrapped Christmas gifts for children in need, raked out barns at a horse sanctuary, and sorted donations for foster care families.
And that was all before the pandemic hit.
Once the lockdown began, new ways to serve those in need were discovered.
During the stay-at-home order, Anna’s Kindness volunteers continued to make a difference. The students and their families sewed more than 120 face masks for the homeless at Miller Manor and Mercy House; drew posters to thank the nursing staff at Glacier Hills long-term care facility; designed more than 75 springtime cards to cheer up seniors in quarantine at The Gilbert Residence nursing home; and spent hours making more than 300 isolation gowns for front-line health care workers.
