Small, everyday acts of kindness don’t feel small when they are truly needed. Kim Holsclaw of Blessings in a Backpack knows this firsthand: “Being kind has life-changing effects on other people,” she says.
Born in Pikeville, Kentucky, Kim is the proud daughter of a coal operator. As an only child and a “daddy’s girl,” Kim says her father and community played a big part in how kindness shaped her life. “My dad influenced how I treat people,” she begins, “and I was fortunate to have grown up in Appalachia where kindness is a big part of the culture.” Kim often saw her father go out of his way to help those down on their luck without expecting anything in return. His example showed her how kind acts influence a person’s well-being.
Kim moved to Louisville after college graduation and has lived here longer than any other city. “This is my home now,” she says. And it’s here that Kim found her calling in kindness when she decided to volunteer for Blessings in a Backpack after being a stay-at-home mom for 17 years.
“I was thinking about re-entering the job market, and my best friend asked if I would be interested in helping Blessings on a part-time basis,” she recalls. Initially, Kim thought this would be a great way to ease back into an office setting. But she quickly fell in love with Blessings’ mission of providing food on the weekends for school-aged children across America who might otherwise go hungry.
“Providing the most basic human need is the kindest thing you can do for someone, especially children,” Kim says. “I was offered a full-time position after six months, and I didn’t hesitate to say yes.” A year later when Blessings started to develop chapters, she was offered her current position as the Louisville chapter’s managing director.
A full backpack may seem like a small gift, but for a child who hasn’t eaten a meal since they left school on Friday, this donation of healthy food is everything. Almost 80,000 kids living in Jefferson County experience food insecurity, according to the Blessings in a Backpack Louisville website. That’s one in four children who, while they receive meals at school during the week, face hunger over the weekends.
“Imagine being a little kid who hasn’t had food for 65 hours — how do we expect them to behave?” Kim asks. According to Feed the Children, food insecurity translates to lower math and reading scores and more absences and tardiness. Blessings in a Backpack seeks to change this. “Making sure a child has a full belly is the starting point for real change,” Kim says. “Test scores will improve, and behavior issues will decline.”
Providing weekend nourishment for kids in our city is a community effort. Blessings works with JCPS family resource counselors, cafeteria specialists, and school staff as well as more than 1,000 volunteers who distribute food to students every Friday. Donors and partners provide the support to purchase food for the programs. Thanks to this collective work, during the 2023-2024 school year, the Louisville chapter of Blessings in a Backpack delivered more than 230,000 hunger-free weekends to over 6,000 children in 48 local schools.
For Kim, choosing a career that allows her to make that kind of significant impact was intentional. “I choose kindness because it’s how I want to live and hopefully influence my children to be kind,” she says.
If you’re looking to build a stronger foundation of kindness in your life, Kim suggests setting a goal to do one small act of kindness each day. “One easy way that can have a ripple effect is to smile and say ‘hello’ when you enter a room full of people,” she says. Other simple ideas are complimenting a friend or allowing someone to move ahead of you in line at the grocery store.
“Your positivity can easily set the tone for what comes next,” Kim says. “Showing kindness to someone else shouldn’t take a lot of effort, and the positive effects it has could change a life.”
By Tonilyn Hornung | Photo of Kim by Randy Daniels | Intro photo by Ditto Bowo
P.S. Here are other ways you can volunteer in your area.
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