For all the rhetoric about "protecting the children," you'd think that we'd never allow a child to be homeless here in America. Think again.... Where's the outrage?
Anita Creamer: For homeless kids, where's the birthday party?
Anita Creamer - acreamer@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, June 1, 2008 Story appeared in SCENE section, Page L1
An avowed fan of birthdays, Lisa Allen just wants to help needy kids celebrate theirs.
Is that asking too much? So it seems.
"I come from a family of birthday celebrators," she says. "I'm a huge birthday fan. It's your own day. How great is that?"
Pretty great, especially when you're a kid looking forward to cake and ice cream, a party with a bounce house and elaborately themed decorations, and lots of friends and adoring family members bearing gifts.
You know, the basic trappings of the average middle-class kid birthday, circa 2008. Some 2-year-olds' birthday parties these days are as lavishly planned as coronations.
Allen, 45, is a speech pathologist who lives in El Dorado Hills with her husband, Donald, a sales executive, and their two kids, 8-year-old Alexander and 3-year-old Olivia.
For the past year, she says, she's reached out to area shelters and charities with her special birthday idea for children.
"I want my husband and my children and me to go to the shelters and bring cake and make it these kids' special day," she says.
See? A simple-enough idea. Cake and a small celebration for kids whose lives are never celebrated very much – kids who've already learned that the world is starkly divided into haves and have-nots, and it's their bad luck to live on the losing side of that equation.
At first, Allen says, the people she has contacted at various charities have seemed enthusiastic about her birthday party idea.
"And then the whole thing piddles out," she says. "Some places straight out tell me, 'No, that wouldn't work here.' But I've had two shelters tell me they'd get a list of kids together and look at times and dates. And then nothing.
"I get the sense there may be some turnover."
Sure, there's that possibility. Personnel changes are hardly foreign to the nonprofit world, which too often tends toward low salaries and a high burnout rate.
Even so, why make it difficult for well-meaning people to help?
"I think there's enthusiasm out there for my idea," says Allen. "But nobody is willing or able to take steps to get it going.
"I'm excited about it and disappointed that nothing's happened yet."
Instead, she's delivered several batches of cupcakes for young birthday boys and girls living at the St. John's Shelter for Women and Children in Sacramento. The kids take the cupcakes to school with them as a way to share their birthdays with their classmates.
But there's been no direct interaction with the children, much less the involvement of her own kids. And to Allen, that's a key element.
"Honestly, as a parent, one of the predominant responsibilitie
"That's just very important to me. I want my children to recognize that they're very blessed, and not everybody has that same good fortune."
Through local charities, for example, the Allens adopt families during the holidays.
"I want my kids to know they're not the only kids in town," she says.
Not long ago, she and Alexander watched an episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" featuring a 6-year-old boy who'd decided to ask guests at his upcoming birthday party to bring gifts for homeless children, not him.
In the weeks before his own birthday, she says, Alexander wanted to do that, too.
"Then as time progressed, he wanted to know if he could keep some gifts and give other gifts away," Allen says. "Finally, he comes to me and very seriously says, 'Mom, I just don't think I'm ready for this.'
"OK, we'll take baby steps."
Like letting a few homeless children know that caring strangers out there would like to celebrate the fact that they're in the world.
No, it shouldn't be so hard to make that happen.
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