STM had the amazing honor of bringing a few of our projects to AVENDRA/ Aramark Building Community Day on September 19, 2019. The volunteers decorated 48, filled 36, and sewed up 46 monster stuffies for Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, made 9 fleece blankets for families in need at Stepping Stones Shelter, decorated and filled 100 resuable cloth bags with toiletries and socks for the Montgomery County Coalition for the Homeless, and made a monetary donation to use towards purchasing 250 new books for our literacy program. Our thanks to Colleen Opitz/Avendra, Aramark, and Emily Merritt/Alliance for Strong Families and Communities for the invitation and grant that made this possible. We appreciate your commitment to our community! #aramarkvolunteer#kindnesswww.smallthingsmatter.org

STM had a great time at the KID Museum#FutureFest on September 15, 2019. Together we made 245 monster stuffies to be donated to Children’s National Medical Center, Adventist HealthCare Shady Grove Medical Center, and The Children’s Inn at NIH. Our thanks to the kind children who stopped by to craft with us, to our fantastic members and volunteers Molemo, Jacob, Marion, Sahana, Avantika, Koji, Aditi, Sophie, Shashwat, Justin, and Lana for helping the children with their creations, to the AMAZING Mona Sharma who sewed and donated 233 fleece monster stuffie blanks, and to our friends at KID Museum for the wonderful opportunity and for their dedication to children! Seeing all the love that went into making each one of these stuffies truly warmed our hearts. #kindness

STM had a fantastic time at the Takoma Park Folk Festival (TPFF) on September 8, 2019. Thanks to those of you who are participating in our community book making project. We are excited to see your finished books! We will be offering the book blanks again through the local TP schools in the coming weeks. The finished books will be on display at the Takoma Park Maryland Library this winter. Our thanks to all the TPFF volunteers who did such a great job organizing this event, to everyone who stopped by our booth, and to our amazing members Molemo, Brigitte, Annie, and Lana for all their hard work.

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!