Teen collects hygiene items to help homeless
Savannah Lowery, a Gordon County 4-H’er, hopes to inspire more community members to donate hygiene items for her community service project.
A local teen hoped to inspire the community to get more involved in supporting those less fortunate through a community service project she organized earlier this year.
“I’ve always had a caring heart. It’s hard to see people struggle,” said Savannah Lowery. “I try to help in every way that I can.”
Lowery, a Gordon County 4-H’er and senior at Southeast Whitfield High School, put together more than 100 personal care bags, stuffed with various hygiene items, for homeless individuals in the community. Each bag contained items like toothbrushes, mouthwash, socks, razors and Band-Aids.
“Since the bags are not due until May it is her hope to exceed her goal and make a positive social impact for those in need in her community,” her mother, Dawn Lowery, said in an email. “Savannah has worked very hard on collecting and putting together these personal care bags. I have watched her collect donations and work late into the night putting these bags together.”
The bags were taken to the Gordon County 4-H office and distributed to local shelters to be handed out to homeless individuals.
“It makes me feel good because I know as many people as I can help will get what they need,” Savannah said. “Because they can’t get stuff like that. It makes me feel like I’m helping.”
Helping the homeless is close to Savannah’s heart, considering her father, who died of cancer several years ago, was homeless at one point in his life.
“It’s a memorable thing,” she said. “It also makes me feel good because he was stuck in that same situation and if he was alive he’d want me to do that.”
The long hours of working on this project also had a positive impact on Savannah, who was the victim of a violent crime last summer and has been struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression since the incident. It has helped to turn her mind away from the trauma of her past and put her attention toward achieving a goal, which is both beneficial to her community and herself.
“All this that I do really helps me,” Savannah said. “Helping out people it just brings me goodness and joy and makes me feel better.”
From the start, Savannah wanted to take on a project that would exemplify what locals can do to make a positive community impact, that through simple acts, the lives of fellow residents could be uplifted, she said.
“She knows what it is to struggle,” her mother said, adding that Savannah was physically abused by her father before her parents split up.
Savannah has a deep love for the arts, namely music and theater, which she has been involved with both at her old school, Gordon Central, and at Southeast. Both outlets are ways for her to express her emotions, she said.
Though Savannah is still deciding on what her future after high school holds, she always want for her giving spirit to be a part for her life.
“She was not prompted to do this,” her mother said. “She did it on her own.”