One of the most powerful deterrents to giving is thinking your gift will not be appreciated, recognized, or that it won’t make a difference. The giving may have been a gift, food, money, or your time. A nagging fear is that the recipient will not think it’s a big deal or, worse yet, they will refuse it.
For more than 16 years, Love Has No Color has not had that fear, and that's a beautiful thing. All of the kids and adults on the Fort Peck Reservation have always been extremely grateful for our efforts.
Something as simple as an all you can eat meal at our summer Fun Days is not so simple to kids that don’t necessarily have 3 square meals a day.
A new backpack is almost expected by many kids living off the reservation. Receiving a stylish, new backpack to start the school year is an unexpected pleasure for the kids on the Reservation.
To be able to hang out, shoot indoor archery, and have meals in a refurbished movie theater doesn’t seem like a big deal to many kids. To the kids on the Fort Peck Reservation, it is a huge deal. It is a safe haven, away from toxic influences, where they can hang with each other and be fed, like heaven on earth.
We recently received a thank you card from a teacher on the Reservation who spoke about the profound effect that our coming back each year has had on the kids. She said this was one of the few constants in the ever-changing lives of these kids.
The promise we gave to these kids is being kept year after year.
If more people knew just how powerful one act of kindness could be, there would be much more kindness in the world; and the world would change for the better.