We’re not all headed straight for That Other Place as long as there are wonderful young women like Ruby Kate Chitsey in the world.
Ruby Kate is an 11-year-old girl in Harrison, Arkansas. For several years, she’s been visiting the residents at the Medicaid-funded nursing homes where her mother, Amanda, works. One day, a little bored, and wishing for something to do, Ruby Kate noticed a resident staring forlornly out the window at a man walking a dog, and she started to wonder what would make the nursing home residents happier.
In order to find out, she did an extraordinary thing: she asked them. She knocked on the doors of their rooms and she inquired (surely Ruby Kate is an aficionado of traditional fairy-stories), “if you could have just three wishes granted, what would they be?”
They wanted such simple things: to pat a dog; to eat a Big Mac; to go to a park and watch families having fun; to have a pair of pants that fit, or a bottle of nice shampoo to wash their hair, a good book to read, or a fresh strawberry to eat.
Here’s a page from Ruby’s research:
Ruby asked her mother for help, and the two of them set up the Three Wishes Fund, a GoFundMe account, and an Amazon Wish List page. To date, she has raised $96,000 dollars through GoFundMe, and the Amazon page takes donations for requested items such as nail polish, paint brushes, nice shampoo, pants, shirts, and headphones.
Here are a couple of stories about Ruby and her work:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/11-year-old-girl-granting-wishes-of-nursing-home-patients/
https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/29/health/iyw-5th-grader-nursing-home-mission-trnd/index.html
What an inspirational story. What modest and achievable goals. And what an immediate difference she’s making in the lives of some of her community’s neediest residents.
Have a lovely and blessed Sunday, everyone. If you’re in the cold part of the country, snuggle up!
