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Zach Bonner began his community service projects, most of which focused on helping homeless children, when he was just six years old. His most notable efforts include his project to help children left homeless by Hurricane Katrina, which continues to this day.
Zach collected an incredible twenty-seven truckloads of sundry items for Hurricane Charlie victims. A year later, he collected six hundred dollars in cash donations for Red Cross post-Katrina efforts and then secured an additional seven thousand dollars worth of new toys and sporting equipment for homeless children living in Red Cross shelters. This year, Zach will hold his second holiday party for some four hundred Katrina children still living in FEMA trailer parks. And Zach has already acquired by donation over one thousand hams and gift bags for hundreds of dispossessed families and their children, which he will distribute over the holiday season.
In 2005 Zach also founded the Little Red Wagon Foundation, Inc. This organization collects and donates backpacks filled with food, school items, and other supplies to disadvantaged children all over the nation. The project also serves beleaguered school districts close to Zach’s home in Florida, especially Title I schools. When Congress passed a resolution to make November the National Homeless Youth Awareness Month, Zach decided his new organization should stage an event to raise awareness about homeless children: a marathon walk from Tampa to Tallahassee covering 280 miles, over twenty-three days. Zach and his team hope this event will help raise money and awareness for the nation’s estimated 1.3 million homeless children. He has already won over a number of leading corporations to lend financial and logistical support to the cause.
Nine-year-old Zach Bonner has accomplished more to help others than many adults. In addition to his work on behalf of Katrina's youngest victims, Zach has undertaken a local project to sensitize high school students to the plight of homeless children. He is that rare child who empathizes with the struggles of the less fortunate and creates projects that help the least advantaged and often the most vulnerable among us: homeless children.
To learn more about Zach Bonner and his cause, and how you can make a difference, please visit: www.littleredwagonfoundation.com.
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