HATTIESBURG, Miss.- After reading an inspiring article about a project that provides homeless children with nighttime comfort care packages, an English teacher at Southern Miss decided to bring that same project to Hattiesburg.
Joyce Inman Assistant Professor of English and Director of Composition at USM said, “It’s a non-profit organization that started in New York City. The woman who started the project was traveling with her child and was thinking about the homeless family they were seeing while they were out and was thinking about how hard it is to get her own child to sleep in a hotel and what it must be like if you have no consistency, if you’re sleeping in a car, a shelter, how difficult it must be to have a child feel secure and have a comfortable night sleep. One of the things she said was that every child deserves a blanket, a toy and a book to go to sleep with at night.”
Inman was instantly moved by the article and knew this was a project that would be perfect for the English Department at USM to be a part of.
“It involves books, it’s going to touch people’s hearts and it’s going to be very meaningful in our local community, so we decided to take that concept and partner with the Fieldhouse for the Homeless and put together tote bags with those three items for children who are homeless in Hattiesburg.”
Children of families who are directed to The Fieldhouse for the Homeless will receive a package that contains a new security blanket, an age appropriate children’s book and a stuffed animal, all nestled inside of a new canvas tote bag.
Interested contributors can donate all three of the items above or just one of them and drop them off at the Liberal Arts building on campus. The English Department will have tote bags ready to fill.
The organization works toward advancing the emotional and cognitive well-being of homeless children by providing them with nighttime comforts.
Project Night Night packages are put into the hands of more than 25,000 homeless children each year at hundreds of shelters throughout America.
