LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — In 2020, 16-year-old Neia Helpful from Potterville began an effort to make Halloween an inexpensive, festive, and joyful expertise for all youngsters in mid-Michigan. Yearly, she collects, accepts, and purchases Halloween costumes for teenagers after which offers them away to households in want.
“It’s kind of like a year-round effort. I mean, generally I still have some left over after the costume giveaway um, and then we’ll got to like Meijer, Target, and sometimes Walmart to, and like find on sale costumes after, after Halloween’s over and then we’ll go to garage sales too. And then sometime people donate them as well,” Helpful defined.
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For this 12 months’s giveaway that came about on the First Presbyterian Church at 510 West Ottawa Avenue in Lansing on Oct. 11, Helpful had greater than 600 costumes prepared handy out.
“Princesses, superheroes, animals, video game characters. We have infant, like zero to adult. We started adding adults because I think it was like the first or second year after I started, I realized like, I was in adult sizes, and I was like, what, 11 or 12? And so, I was like, well we kind of have to add in adult sizes. So we have, I think up to maybe a couple XL adult sizes too,” Helpful mentioned.
Helpful shops every thing at residence in her basement and collects costumes all 12 months lengthy. She tells 6 Information most of the individuals who present as much as her costume giveaway present plenty of gratitude.
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“They’re always very thankful. And then my favorite is like the little kids and they’re all happy because they just found a new costume, especially if they found like the one that they wanted. That’s the best,” mentioned Helpful.
For probably the most half, Helpful does every thing on her personal, however acknowledges “there’s so many people that help with the event, and just like, getting the costumes to me so that I can distribute them, so it’s not, it’s definitely not all me, but I’m very proud of just, what has become of this.”
Helpful tells 6 Information she plans to proceed her Lansing Costume Giveaway for Youngsters once more subsequent 12 months, marking the seventh annual occasion and is planning a bunch assortment drive after Halloween for anybody focused on serving to her together with her mission.
If in case you have Halloween costumes you wish to donate to Helpful, you possibly can contact her by her Fb web page.