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Lifestyle & Human Interest

Selfless 5-Year-Old Girl Uses Allowance To Bless the Homeless with Special Goody Bags

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One of the great things about children is how they don’t seem daunted by the enormity of problems. Take homelessness, for example.

Ask adults to solve the issue, and they’ll launch into all of the (very real) reasons why it’s impossible. But one Alabama girl who doesn’t know those reasons has begun making an equally real impact in the lives of the homeless.

According to Inside Edition, 5-year-old Tynslee Blue became interested in the homeless after a single specific event. When she was only four, her mother, Haley Bennett, was engaged to a man working in a downtown area.

Bennett’s fiancé came home one night and explained that he’d seen a homeless man sleeping beside a dumpster.

“We made him a plate to take down there,” Bennett recalled.

That lit the proverbial fire underneath Tynslee. Suddenly, the little girl was burning with questions.

She wondered why the man didn’t have a house, what could drive him to sleep out in the open, how he kept safe from the elements. So the family decided to give the homeless man a blanket face to face.

After that encounter, which ended in an expression of thanks from the man, Tynslee started doing something amazing: She began saving her allowance.

With Bennett’s help, the little girl started researching items that the homeless most desperately need. Then she began to make what she called “blessing bags” using those items.

“She has an allowance,” Bennett told ABC News. “She cleans her room and helps me with chores, but instead of buying toys … we will go to the Dollar Tree, we will buy ponchos, umbrellas.”

Tynslee doesn’t stop at assembling those gallon-sized Ziploc bags, however — she distributes them, too.

With adult supervision, she travels to a park in her hometown of Florence, Alabama. Plenty of homeless people sleep there.


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Taking her 3-three-year-old cousin and 2-year-old sister, she loads her wagon up with the blessing bags and starts to give them away.

“She acts like these people are no different to her, she will be like, ‘Hey, how are you doing, and god bless you,’” Bennett said.

“A normal 5-year-old ain’t going to try to help people, or walk up to a stranger and try to help people, or give them their juice or their water.”

Bennett said, “They’re shocked. They weren’t expecting a 5-year-old to walk up and say, ‘I just wanted to give this to you.’”

“I feel inside of my body happy,” Tynslee explained when asked why she hands out the bags.

She added, “They’re the same as us.”

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A graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in literature, Loren also adores language. He has served as assistant editor for Plugged In magazine and copy editor for Wildlife Photographic magazine.
A graduate of Wheaton College with a degree in literature, Loren also adores language. He has served as assistant editor for Plugged In magazine and copy editor for Wildlife Photographic magazine. Most days find him crafting copy for corporate and small-business clients, but he also occasionally indulges in creative writing. His short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies and magazines. Loren currently lives in south Florida with his wife and three children.
Education
Wheaton College
Location
Florida
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Entertainment, Faith, Travel




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