Bringing Along Some Goodie Bags for the Homeless

Sometimes, you just have to take your good deeds on the road.

Lorelle Shea travels light. Which means she has enough room to bring a little extra for those in need, as she did on a recent trip to Los Angeles. While there, she enhanced her sightseeing by bringing along goodie bags when she went out for the day — bags meant for homeless people, and containing things like a shaving razor, toothbrush and toothpaste, soap, some food and bottled water, a bit of cash, and a few other useful items to make people’s time on the streets just slightly easier.

Over the course of her visit, she gave away about half a dozen such goodie bags. “The reaction was just great,” Shea told Good Turns. “People were genuinely surprised and grateful.”

“Kindness can manifest in all kinds of different ways. There are so many ways that people can help, if they’re just in that mindset.”

Good Turns first spotted Lorelle’s kind deed on, fittingly, a site called kindness.org, which is hoping to inspire a million acts of kindness this holiday season. “I just wanted to share the story,” she said when we spoke to her, “hopefully to inspire people to do similar things, or to have the idea that something like this is possible, even in your own community. We need to be there for our friends and neighbors as well.”

Shea, who is 26, lives in Asbury Park NJ, where she’s no stranger to lending a helping hand.  For the last five years, she has volunteered with an organization called Holiday Express, which delivers “music, food, gifts, financial support and friendship” to those in need, mostly during the holiday season. One of the things Shea does for them: pack gift bags.

Though she works at The Market, a shop devoted to local artists and artisans, Shea has in the past done graphic design for socially conscious companies and is looking for a full-time job, “preferably at a company that has a big heart of some kind.”

Any such company would be lucky to have her, it seems. “Kindness can manifest in all kinds of different ways,” she says. “It’s best if it’s organic and from the heart, but there are so many ways that people can help, if they’re just in that mindset.”

Posted December 23, 2016