Mariah Smith – Blankets For The Homeless

Mariah Smith is 21 years old and is the founder of Blankets for the Homeless. Mariah was abandoned at birth on Christmas Eve in 1993, and although she was adopted into a loving family, she was aware of how challenging, even sometime life-threatening, being homeless is for so many people. In early October of 2011, Mariah and her adoptive mother Moira were having lunch at a local fast food chain when she noticed a homeless man nearby. He was crouched down on the ground and had a little cart with him that had bags tied to it. Mariah knew that she wanted to do something to help him. So she looked in the back seat of her family's van and saw that they had a blanket. She grabbed the blanket and the food that she had ordered and took it to the man. He immediately wrapped the blanket around himself and started eating. When Mariah got home she went to her family's linen closet and saw blankets that she did not even recognize. She knew what she needed to do. She made a flier with her phone number on it asking for donations of used blankets. Within a week she had distributed over 300 fliers to hotels, local businesses, schools, and churches. After just two days people donated over 50 blankets and every day she would get calls from the fliers she distributed. More blankets were being donated. This was the beginning. Mariah began with a simple idea: supplying a common household item to help keep people warm and from there the effort took on a life of it's own. Soon Mariah and her mom decided to expand to giving out bag lunches of sandwiches, fruit and water along with their blankets. They also started asking homeless people what else they needed and heard things like socks, backpacks, toiletries, etc. So they started asking people to donate these items too. Today it is still Mariah and her mom delivering all of the goods to people around the city, but they now usually have help making lunches 3 days a week from groups like boy/girl scouts, knitting groups and the national honors society. They do it all out of their own home and their own van. Since Mariah's original idea back in 2011, Blankets For the Homeless has handed out over 110,000 blankets and lunches, over 50,000 additional items and they estimate that they’ve helped tens of thousands of people!