Timmi Kilgore (right) with her daughter Dashaya and Heather Brightwood, Blessings founder.
A few years ago, Timmi Kilgore, patient service associate in CPUP, enrolled her then 9-year-old daughter in a summer program for 5 to 12-year-old children sponsored by Blessings, an organization which, according to its website, helps to “encourage, enlighten, and instill in children the knowledge that there are no limits to what they can achieve.”
Every Saturday, Tyjaya, Kilgore’s daughter, would enjoy three to four hours of planned activities, including learning skits, poems, and dances, and also received a meal. “It was a very safe, clean environment for kids to go on a weekend,” Kilgore said. “I felt comfortable bringing my daughter there.” At the end of the 8-week program, the participants put on a performance for their parents.
At the time, Kilgore had no idea how much Blessings would become a part of her family’s life. And yet today, her younger daughter is now a junior volunteer in the summer program, while Dashaya, her older daughter, who is a special needs teacher, is helping to expand the original program into one for teens. Kilgore herself wears many hats, including helping with fundraising, providing food for the children in the program, and helping out on Saturdays if they’re shorthanded.
The organization operates on a shoestring budget – the owner and volunteers frequently pay expenses out of their own pockets – but the Penn Medicine CAREs grant that Kilgore received will help “make sure children continue to have a safe place to go on the weekend and a meal,” she said. “For some kids, this may be the only meal and positive reinforcement they receive outside of school.”