9-year-old organizes toiletries drive

GREENFIELD — Addison Brown just wanted to see them smile.

That’s all the 9-year-old Greenfield girl hoped for on Good Friday as she arranged 100 bags filled with toothbrushes, toothpaste, lip balm and Easter candy on a table in the Kenneth Butler Memorial Soup Kitchen.

Addison also put together a raffle for Easter baskets with necessities — and some fun things — for a child, a man and a woman who came to the soup kitchen looking for a warm meal. It’s not the first time Addison has organized such an event for clients of the soup kitchen, and she hopes it won’t be the last.

The fourth-grader at Greenfield Intermediate School has volunteered at the soup kitchen with her mom, Stacy Brown, for just about a year, and in December, out of concern for the folks she sees every week, she organized a winter clothing drive with 100 bags filled with gloves, hats and socks, as well as a candy cane.

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For these philanthropic efforts, Addison asks friends, family and her peers at school and in the K-Kids leadership program through the local Kiwanis Club for donations and help. For her Easter drive, K-Kids donated the majority of the gift bags she handed out, Addison said.

Her dentist donated the toothbrushes, and an anonymous donor left a large package of toothpaste on the Brown family’s front step.

Addison has a long track record of giving to others and serving her community, her mom said.

When she was 4, she raised money to donate to Riley Hospital for Children.

And after winning a chance to shadow Mayor Chuck Fewell for a day last year, Addison went to work helping at Greenfield-Hancock Animal Management. Soon, she told her mom she wanted to volunteer at the soup kitchen, too.

Addison hopes to continue her streak of providing seasonally appropriate gifts to the people who come through the doors of the downtown Greenfield soup kitchen, she said. She’s thinking this summer her gift bags might contain battery-operated fans.