Chicago boy still distributing blessing bags amid pandemic

Jahkil Jackson is on a noble mission.

By the end of 2020, the Chicago seventh grader wants to pack and distribute 15,000 blessing bags to people who are homeless. That will bring him to a grand total of 50,000 blessing bags since 2016, when he first started his project, inspired by a trip to Lower Wacker Drive with his great-aunt, who drove around handing out chili and soup to people sheltering below the city’s gleam and bustle.

“That sparked something in him,” Na-Tae Jackson, Jahkil’s mom, told me in 2017. “He would literally tear up when he would see someone who was homeless, trying to understand how that person got into that situation.”

Jahkil started packing bags of socks, toiletries and snacks to keep in his parents’ car and hand out to people in need.

He gave out 3,000 bags that first year. He won a Gloria Barron Prize for Young Heroes award. With the help of his parents and his grandmother, Phyllis Smith, he launched a nonprofit called Project I Am (officialprojectiam.com).

Barack Obama tweeted about him. Marvel turned him into a superhero with his own comic book, “Make Way for Jahkil.” CNN named him a 2019 Young

Wonder.

He’s given out blessing bags in Los Angeles, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., Atlanta and Puerto Rico.

In early March, when the coronavirus news was swirling but life was, for the most part, still normal, Jahkil hosted a rollerskating party at The Rink on 87th Street. It was a celebration of four years of blessing bags. He asked everyone to bring items to donate. Two hundred people came bearing supplies.

His mom put most of them in storage.

Two weeks after the party, Jahkil would find himself home from school, e-learning indefinitely, and mostly stuck inside.

In his downtime, Jahkil is packing blessing bags by the dozens. He estimates he’s made 250 in the past month. And because of the supplies his friends brought to the skating party, he and his parents haven’t had to venture out to their usual list of dollar stores and other suppliers. They even have a few small bottles of hand sanitizer, which Jahkil is happily including in the bags.

Jahkil and his dad, Jamiel Jackson, delivered a box of blessing bags to an assisted living facility a few weeks ago, but Jahkil wasn’t allowed past the front steps, for safety reasons. Smith, Jahkil’s grandmother, is taking bunches of Jahkil’s bags and dropping them at homeless shelters around the city. Jahkil is stockpiling some of them at home to distribute himself, when it’s safe.

TERRENCE ANTONIO JAMES / CHICAGO TRIBUNE Jahkil Jackson picks up supplies from a storage facility in Chicago so he can make more blessing bags to give out to homeless and needy people. With schools closed for the remainder of the academic year, he is using his stay-at-home time to make hundreds more bags.