Bonus Clip: A Chair-ity Success Story

In this bonus to our conversation with Maria Paparella, Maria shares a personal story of one of the young adults she deeply connected with through her organization Chair-ity. This young adult faced several challenges as she aged out of the foster care system and started life on her own. But with her perseverance, strength, intelligence, and support from Maria, she has become one of the many Chair-ity success stories. This organization truly makes a difference, one person at a time. 

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Transcript

Diane Bickett: 0:00

Enjoy this bonus clip of our conversation with Maria Paparella of Chair-ity Inc. Here Maria shares a very personal story of one of the young adults that she has helped in her work and that young person's impact on her. Do you have a couple success stories you'd like to share with us?

Maria Paparella: 0:16

Yeah, depends on how much time you have.

Diane Bickett: 0:18

This is for how many I can share.

Maria Paparella: 0:20

Um, I will share one that hopefully I do not tear up. Um, because I am so extremely proud by this young adult came to us now it was about three years ago. Um, she came to us right before her junior year of high school. Um, she had just moved in to her first apartment at 18 years old. She was just about to start again her junior year of high school. We delivered her furniture, got her set up I mean, it's you, you know, not unlike what we do on a daily basis that we enter the apartment, it's completely empty. Typically, you know, there's no furniture and there are a few trash bags of furniture and a pillow and the blanket on the ground and they're. We get there and she may have been one of only a handful that we've helped before their junior year. Usually it's before senior year, right after.

Maria Paparella: 1:38

And we furnished her apartment and, like I said, you know, the fulfilling on promises does create such a strong connection with us and my program manager was there for that delivery and she, you know, just started asking for my program manager for this and that and we really realized, okay, were her primary point of contact for her asking for things. Why, also, why isn't she asking her social worker different social services agency that she would be connected with Um again. She just started asking us for stuff and different things. And you know, I think, like anyone working in a nonprofit, different kids will impact you in different ways, and some, for some reason yeah, who knows why you will connect with, stick with. And she was one that I just was losing sleep over. I couldn't pinpoint it, I couldn't figure out why, and so we then, you know, flash forward a few months. We then had an upcoming event and I was like you know what? I think she has a really amazing story and I want to share her story at our event because I think it exemplified what aging out of foster care was how challenging it is, the lack of support you have, how scary it can be living in a place that you don't really know. You know she chose to live in that area so that she could stay in that high school district, so she could finish high school at that in that same high school. Impressive, yeah, so impressive, instead of dropping out and trying to do something else. I mean just that choice alone in itself and trying to do something else. I mean just that choice alone in itself. And so you know, we filmed her and filming is a pretty intimate experience if you've ever done it, and especially just sharing your life story that's so vulnerable and you know, again, was just like really connected with her and was just really amazed. And I already said, proud, but you'll realize why I'm so proud of her now. But just even sharing her story was so proud of her.

Maria Paparella: 4:09

And then, you know, flash forward a few more months and we had a donor reach out to us and say, hey, we have a bunch of these live Christmas trees that we used for an event. We don't know what to do with them. We're just going to trash them, unless you have a few kids who we could drop off Christmas trees at. And so I was like, great, so we had just recently served a handful of young adults who had children of their own and I was like, okay, let's get them. And then we had a handful left and I was trying to figure out you know kind of how to do it and what's fair and everything. And I was like, okay, we need to do one because she did our video. So we dropped one off and I was telling this donor about each young adult that we delivered the Christmas tree to and why we chose them to drop off the Christmas tree.

Maria Paparella: 5:09

And she heard her story and was also really drawn to it and had a handful of people donate Christmas presents to her and we decorated or brought decorations for her tree. And as we were dropping them off, I was like, okay, have you ever decorated a tree? Do you want me to help? You Like, have you ever put the lights up? Do you need help? And she's like, no, I've never done it before. 18 years had never decorated a tree.

Maria Paparella: 5:43

And so I spent, you know, the next few hours with her, teaching her how to put the lights on the tree and how to, you know, put the little wire through the ornaments to then hang up up and not to prick yourself a million times, which I did.

Maria Paparella: 5:59

And, um, and like we said it, we set it all up and put the christmas presents under the tree. And she's like this is the most presents I've ever had it was, I think, four like not anything super remarkable. Um, and then, um, you know, flash forward a few more months, her and I, you know, text every once in a while. Then it was her senior year of high school we're talking. She now has a mentor that's involved and you know she has another person in her life and she's, you know, slowly starting to gain stability and unfortunately her mentor fell through and we had to find her another mentor. Then it's now April of her senior year and we're talking about okay, what's graduation look like? I'm just asking her the fun senior year questions, or questions that would be fun for me, while I was in my senior year of high school and I asked her about graduation and I asked her who was coming and what she was doing and everything.

Maria Paparella: 7:13

And she was like I don't think anyone's coming. I was like what do you mean? And you know, she doesn't really have a support system. And I am so lucky that I got to be that support system for her and then, you know, so lucky that then I got to be the person to take her out to dinner to celebrate graduation, to celebrate graduation. And then, you know, further along the line, we talked about college and where she was going, because she's such an excellent student.

Maria Paparella: 7:55

And as we were kind of doing some stuff a different day, we were filling out some forms and I asked her okay, so how are we getting there? And she was like I don't know, I might just Uber. And I was like that is not an acceptable answer. And you know, we're going to get a team together to do that and we're going to move you in and I'm just, I'm really proud to say that we just moved her in a few weeks ago and she is doing extremely well and she's in, thank you, and she's in college and where I I'm not gonna say I'm trying to not disclose too much information, but she, I think it's just, you know, just a symbol of a success story.

Maria Paparella: 8:49

I think in our day-to-day lives or at least the way I grew up in a definitely super privileged bubble it was normalized that everyone goes to high school, everyone then goes off to college and then everyone gets some sort of job. And for her to jump over all of those barriers that were set up in front of her to then get to that amazing milestone and do that all on her own, essentially, I think is just incredible. And she didn't have mom and dad nagging her in the back saying you got to get these forms in, you got to get this done, you got to get these scores on a test. I think she's just incredibly self-motivated and, um, I really hope that you know so many other young adults can kind of hear her story and then motivate themselves to make those or jump those hurdles.

Diane Bickett: 9:51

Thank you for sharing that story. I think it's hard to imagine, when we have as much as we do, that there are kids out there facing these type of hurdles and overcoming them For sure.