Have YOU Paid it Forward?

photo courtesy everywomanblog.com

After the holiday, I came across a Facebook page for "Pay it Forward". For those of you who are unsure about this, the Pay it Forward movement is a yearly event (although everyone is encouraged to do this anytime of the year) where people do something for someone else without expecting anything in return. This could be anything at all- buying someone a cup of coffee, helping out if you see
someone struggling with a door, giving out a coat to someone who doesn't have one, etc. When I saw this, I realized it was an opportunity to mix my passion for helping others and some great companies that would want to do the same.

I am happy to say that in the minimal amount of time that we had to pull this together, my plan was put into action and today, January 26th, there will be ten local families that will be getting a surprise bag of food items sent home to them. These are ten anonymous families that were chosen byMrs. Debbie Williams and although I may never meet them, I hope that our Pay it Forward bag helps them understand that there are people out in the world who wanted to help them, even if it was one bag of food. NutriFamily had a blast putting these bags together, knowing they were more than just bags. My only wish is to be able to do even more next year.


For the most part, we tried to keep the selections allergy-friendly in hopes that if the family has someone with food allergies, they would know that we were thinking of them but also for a family who does not have food allergies, I wanted to be able to share great foods that they may not normally look for or even know exist. As you can see, each bag contains enough food items for a few meals as well as a note explaining why they were getting the bag of goodies.

I would also like to thank the people that helped me with this as well:

• Tess (& her manager Don too!) Community Table Lowes Foods Robinhood Road, Winston-Salem. They donated 10 bags which each included: 1 box of Van's cereal, 1 carton of Rice Dream non-dairy beverage, 1 box of Mueller's gluten free pasta and 1 carton of Pacific chicken broth.
  
• Michael & fellow helpers at Freedom Foods for sending 20 boxes of their Cocoa Crunch cereal (2 boxes for each bag)
  
• Kaitlin & staff at Winona Pure Oils for sending cans of their Popcorn Butter Spray oil with a special message attached 
  
• Elizabeth & the wonderful ladies at SunButter Sunflower Spread who sent jars of their Creamy SunButter (So proud, THIS is why I am honored to blog for them!)  
  
• Brothers-All-Natural Fruit Crisps for their packet of fruit crisps
  

I hope that these families enjoy what we have put together for them and I hope it let's them go to sleep tonight with a feeling of a bit more comfort and peace. I wish I could have done more, helped more families or provided more but this gives me a goal to surpass each year going forward. I encourage all of you to show someone that there are still good people in the world. There should be no looking back, only looking forward- how will you choose to do this in 2015 and the years to follow?