STM held two Back To School clothing and food distributions on September 1, 2019. We gave away 1012 pieces of brand new clothing to families in need at Rolling Terrace ES, Piney Branch ES, Takoma Park ES, Takoma Park MS, and Blair HS. Our thanks to Imperfect for the donation of their great produce, to our wonderful partners at TPSS Co-op/Leandra Nichola for providing goodies for the children and at Hampshire Tower Apartments/ Doris Duarte, and to our AMAZING members and volunteers who assisted the families. #kindness

STM had a great time painting rocks with the kids at Thursday @ The Co-op on August 29, 2019. The evening was filled with lovely music by Polyphony Marimba, delicious food by Hardy’s BBQ, fun tiny house tours, and yummy in-store wine tasting by Kysela Wines, Winchester,Va. Our thanks to Leandra Nichola/ TPSS Co-op for allowing us to come out and share our mission and projects with the TP community and to our wonderful members Brigitte and Lana for helping the kids spread kindness in our community.#kindness

Our thanks to our wonderful student volunteers who spent their summer hosting book and toiletery drives to support our programs. Our thanks to Mete for hosting a book drive to support our school-wide book distributions and to Kim, Jack, Andrew, Marion, and Sahana who hosted toiletries drives that will be used to make care bags for the homeless during the holidays and on MLK Day. The in-kind and monetary donations you collected will greatly help those in need. Thank you for all of your kindness and hard work! #kindness#literacy#homelessness

Mahalo to everyone at Meki’s Tamure @ Pacific Fun Day Festival for such a wonderful day! Our thanks to Randy Correa for generously sharing his shave ice spot with us so that we could fundraise for our nonprofit, to Meki, Maurisi, Kim, and Jennifer for all your hard work putting PFD together, to all of the performers and vendors, and to all the wonderful people who came out to share in the aloha. Special thanks to Nicole, Molemo, and Lana for all of their hard work!

STM and friends had a great night out at the Washington Nationals vsMilwaukee Brewers game on August 16, 2019. Our thanks to the Nats for the amazing seats!

STM held a canned food drive at Giant Food Inc Rockville yesterday on August 15, 2019. Our thanks to everyone who came by to donate canned foods and monetary donations and to our members Sam and Lana for their hard work! We are also grateful for the generous donations of canned goods and non-perishable foods from our friendsHelen Winder and Joy Paz that we received on August 14, 2019. These donations will be used to stock the Difference Makers pantry atMontgomery Blair High School and supplement the Difference Makersfood distributions at Richard Montgomery High School. #kindness

Thanks to everyone for coming out and supporting our Shave Ice and Lemonade Stand on August 11, 2019 at the Takoma Park Farmers Market. We were especially thrilled to have the amazing Marc Elrich and his family come by along with so many of our other friends! Thanks to our wonderful volunteers and everyone who stopped by to support our efforts!

Small Things Matter and Difference Makers are collecting non-perishable food, feminine hygeine products, and toiletries to support the new Difference Makers Kokua Foods pantry at Blair HS.

Small Things Matter has been collecting items all summer and is hosting a canned food drive on Thursday, August 15 from noon-4pm at the Giant on Rockville Pike. Please come by to support us if you can.

Donations can also be dropped off at the DM/STM lemonade stands each Sunday from 10-2pm at the Takoma Park Farmers Market on the corner of Carroll and Laurel during August. Thanks!

STM spent a lovely evening at the Community CHEER Lunch and Learn Awards Ceremony on August 2, 2019. The evening was filled with inspirational speeches, music, performances, and a slide show of the summer camp activities. Our thanks to Jacquette Frazier and Doris Duarte for their deep commitment to our youth! We can’t wait to see your campers next summer!

Lana had a great time meeting the PreK Vision students on July 30, 2019. STM was honored to make their graduation buttons again this year. This time we made special buttons for the students with cortical visual impairment (CVI) by having their names bubble highlighted in either red or yellow. Lana learned about the challenges these students face by trying on goggles that simulate varying degrees of blindness (field of vision issues, cataracts, nearsightedness, etc.). Our thanks to their wonderful and dedicated teacher Diana Garcia-Mejia for allowing us spend some time in her classroom.