Helpful Hearts was born out of a then 7 year-old’s desire to help people. Over the last few years, Brittany Peterson, 12, has raised over two thousand dollars and helped many people in different walks of life.
Brittany was born prematurely due to a rare form of food poisoning called Listeria. This poison caused Cerebral Palsy which confines Brittany’s body to a wheelchair, but has never confined her mind. She’s always had a compassionate heart and a desire to help those in need, in addition to an uncanny way of motivating people to “do the right thing”.
Madeleine is Brittany’s younger sister (she’s almost 10) and although she’s always been known as “Brittany’s sister”, she is a philanthropist in her own right. Maddie’s cute drawings have been a big selling point and her fearlessness when selling door-to-door always has us awestruck.
Eliza, (born in July of 2003) has recently become an important part of Helpful Hearts. She not only provides the “cute factor” when selling door-to-door, but her artistic nature has been brought to life on paper. She loves to draw!
Helpful Hearts has done five projects now and are currently working on a sixth! For the first project Helpful Hearts raised money to buy toys for the children living at Simonka Place (a shelter for women and their children). Next they bought sleeping bags for those living under the Marion Street Bridge here in Salem. Over $300 was raised and 29 sleeping bags were bought. A Bible was put in the bottom of each one. The first project of 2007 was to send 10 boxes to soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That goal was easily met. After that, Helpful Hearts provided a much-needed laptop to a missionary couple (they’re Christian-Jews) who live in Israel. They came to the US for the first time, and our pastor thought it would be great to be able to surprise them with a new laptop computer. Brittany adopted that project with her typical excitement and within two weeks Helpful Hearts was able to purchase a top of the line laptop for our new friends, Max and Tanya. Helpful Hearts just finished a “Wounded Warrior” project. They sent boxes of much needed supplies to injured soldiers at Bethesda Naval Hospital thanks to generous support from Wal-Mart. They were also able to send 20 more soldier boxes to Iraq & Afghanistan , thanks to generous support from Costco & Wal-Mart. Helpful Hearts has also done a library for the Simonka Place and raised a enough money to buy 131 books to give to the children there. Their latest project was also a library for the Zobel House and they donated 188 books to the families there!
Thank you for your support!
God Bless!
Helpful Hearts
Email: helpfulhearts@gmail.com