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 This week our own club member, Jacqui Burleigh, founder of Jenna's Blessing Bags, spoke to us about her late daughter Jenna, who very sadly and tragically was murdered in August 2017 in the Temple campus area of Philly. Jenna was truly a free-spirit who believed in good vibes, human kindness, and equality for all. She also had a great deal of love for animals and empathy for the homeless. She was always helping people in some way. |
Jenna's legacy is living on through Jenna's Blessing Bags which are backpacks filled with personal toiletries, socks, hats/gloves/scarves (in winter), snacks, water bottles, paper/pens, and face masks. These are distributed to the homeless in and around the Philly areas. But of course now, with the COVID-19 crisis, distribution of these packs has been very limited.
The foundation has fund raisers such as T-shirts for sale, which help to financially support them and allowing them to now have an office in Towamencin Township, near the Forty Foot Road/Sumneytown Pike area. Supplies and new backpacks can be dropped off for donation to area police stations. Local hospital E.R.s can only keep about 5 packs on hand at any time due to limited "storage" available, but the foundation likes to have some ready to go for the hospitals.
To date, the foundation has distributed 1,000+ filled backpacks in Philly, Denver, Ann Arbor, Springfield (Mass), and Canada. They would like to grow to be world wide organization.