While some 12-year-olds might be out playing with friends or joining sports teams, Kate Pauling is busy working a part-time job and spreading joy with her volunteer efforts.
Pauling is a newspaper carrier for the 91大黄鸭 Capital New. When she isn鈥檛 busy delivering the top stories door-to-door, she is fundraising for the Samaritan鈥檚 Purse Shoe Boxes, a program where volunteers collect gifts such as toys, school supplies, and hygiene items for children around the world.
The gifts are then packed up, into shoeboxes and delivered to 150 countries.
The program works under the mission Operation Christmas Child, which started in 1993 and has about 700 volunteers who pack shoeboxes and help to provide more than 400 drop-off locations across Canada.
Pauling has been fundraising and packing shoeboxes since kindergarten. This year, in just two weeks, she managed to raise enough money to send 11 shoeboxes to children in need.
The energetic youth not only has the expertise to fundraise and organize shoeboxes, but also to bake.
Thanks to her skills in the kitchen, Pauling baked up peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, put them into vintage jars, and sold them outside a local store.
鈥淪he combined her love for helping others, baking, shopping, and gift-giving into this project, and had so much fun doing it,鈥� said Sandra Pauling, Kate鈥檚 mother.
