Your Change Can Bring Changes

"If you could illuminate a youth's future, what would you do?"

KidCents logo in different bright colors, red, green, yellow, blue, orange,pinkWhat is charity? We hear about people making huge donations or travelling across the world to help others, but charity is not limited to these two options. There are many of us who want to contribute to our communities, but are worried about the amount of time and money we are able to give. However, we need to remember that an ocean is made of millions of tiny water drops. When we each contribute something small, eventually it can become something big. But how small can our contribution be? It could be as small as the penny in your pocket.

The Rite Aid Corporation is a prominent drugstore chain based in the United States. It has been devoted to improving the health and wellness of local communities through their Rite Aid Foundation. The KidCents program, founded by Rite Aid in 2014, now works with more than 440 non-profit organizations to realize their purpose of improving children’s lives. Through enrolling in the KidCents program, your purchases at the Rite Aid Pharmacy will be rounded up to the next whole dollar amount. This leftover change will go to an organization of your choosing (like PYD!)  to make meaningful differences in the lives of children in your local community.

Partners for Youth with Disabilities joined the KidCents program in 2015. Over the last two years with the KidCents program, PYD has received almost $20,000 from the Rite Aid Foundation. PYD just confirmed that we will continue to partner with KidCents for our third year in 2018! Over the past few years, close to 100 people chose us as their KidCents beneficiary. Today, we are looking forward to seeing even more people choose PYD as their charity for the KidCents program.

As a part of this mission, we would like to share the artwork created by our team and fellow artists within the community to motivate people to sign up for the KidCents program and we hope choose PYD as their beneficiary. We have produced a sketched illustration (which you can find on our Instagram) as well as a flyer that we will distribute in the community.

This sketched picture will also serve as a start of PYD’s Giving Tuesday campaign. By posting this picture on social media, PYD is encouraging more people to create artwork for the cause. If you would like to lend a hand, you can turn in your art to info@pyd.com or submit it on social media using the hashtag #IAmPYD.

Join the conversation and add your #Inktober art on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Be sure to tag #IAmPYD!

This post was written by  Yidan Gao, Yuxin Dai, Lavinia Fung and Samantha Santoro of the BU PRLab. Edited by Nicole Malo.