Like many 7-year-old girls, Richmond resident Noelle Stanton loves unicorns, cats and gymnastics. She’s also a picky eater, prompting her mother to frequently admonish her to not waste her food when others are hungry.
For most families, that’s where the conversation would end.
Not for little Noelle, a second-grader at Prospect Sierra Elementary, with a shy smile and a head of braids. Not content with her mother’s answers, she wanted to know how hunger is possible in a world of plenty.
“We were having a discussion about people being hungry and why. That is when Noelle says, ‘God shared his food and I want to share mine too,’ ” recalled her mother, Vieneese Stanton. So Noelle announced that this year, instead of having an 8th birthday party, what she wanted most was to feed people.
Now, the family is doing just that with two events planned for Sat., April 11. People in need will be able to pick up a bag of groceries and get a warm meal and a lunch item, such as a sandwich, to go. “I’ve seen people with signs asking for food and many people don’t stop for them,” said Noelle. “It’s really not fair. I want them to survive and be happy and not have to beg.”
The mom-and-daughter team had raised $2,140 of their $2,600 goal as of March 3, and they’re hoping for more so that they and an army of volunteers can serve up to 200 people. The meals and grocery items will be distributed at Bay Area Rescue Mission, which has a shelter at 200 Macdonald Ave., and by Life Restoration Ministries in Oakland, where the Stanton family worships. The events will run from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Family brings food to local unhoused man
Over the past several months, Noelle has gotten an education in need when she, her mother and younger sister, Nailah, began bringing food to an older homeless man, “KD,” who often sits near the IHOP restaurant in Richmond’s Hilltop neighborhood, where the family lives. That has helped the girls develop an awareness that not everyone has food or a warm place to sleep. The family also volunteers with their church to bring food and warm items to unhoused people in Oakland.
“I’m very proud of Noelle and I think that it’s great that this 7-year-old is doing what more of us adults need to be doing and that’s helping each other,” said Bo Jackson, the pastor at Life Restoration Ministries in Oakland.
Vieneese Stanton, too, knows what it’s like to be homeless.
Although she now has a good job as an administrator at a private school in Marin County, she often stayed in shelters as a child growing up in Richmond. “My mom, siblings and I moved a lot and sometimes we didn’t have a place to stay, so we’d go to a shelter or a hotel. It was very destabilizing.”
She doesn’t talk about it much with her girls and insists that her daughter’s humanitarian impulse is all her own.
“I’m hoping that this fills her cup and that by doing this, Noelle is humbled and gains a love for community service,” Viennese Stanton said. “But really, I’m just her project manager.”
