Katie Ott Johnson | Strategic Organizational Leadership
For my project, I worked with the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center to make comfort kits for teens.
The Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center is a center that is dedicated to helping children who have experienced sexual abuse find justice, while helping the children find hope and healing. They also help teach prevention to the community to help prevent child sexual abuse.
When children go to the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center, they often get a comfort kit. Those kits usually contain blankets, toys, stuffed animals, etc. However, older children and teens usually aren’t into that stuff. So, the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center tasked me with figuring out what items would comfort teens, raising money to build the kits, and then building them so that they could be distributed.
RESEARCH
My first step was research. I first researched comfort items in general, and got some good answers, including Zen coloring books, blankets, journals, etc. It’s also fun to get some ‘goodies,’ so I did some research to figure out what would be some good, practical treats to put in the kits.
I then wanted to figure out what the experts said about what items would comfort teens, but there wasn’t much research done in that area. I then decided to go to the source directly- the teens.
I made a simple survey asking teens and parents of teens what top 3 items would comfort them the most, along with their top 3 favorite ‘goodies.’
The top results came back: Zen coloring book with colored pencils, stress balls/fidget toys, journal and pens, blanket, water bottle, chocolate/candies, and gum/mints.
FUNDRAISING
Now that I had an idea of what teens would be comforted by, I got to work raising money.
I asked around the community and did research as to which businesses participated in fundraisers.
I found some businesses that did fundraisers, but either due to the type of fundraiser, or recent legal trouble (I wanted to protect the image and mission of the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center above all else), I decided it would be best not to pursue fundraisers with those businesses.
I found that Pizza Pie Cafe was passionate about supporting the community’s needs. They were generous enough to donate 25% of sales of those participating in the fundraiser for a whole four days! I set up a week for the fundraiser and we had a good turnout!
I realized that fundraisers weren’t going to be enough to supplement the need for supplies for the kits, so I turned to asking for donations. I created a professional script to talk about the mission of the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center, along with the project that they were trying to accomplish. One organization asked for a project brief in order to give a donation, which I quickly made and submitted. I was successful in raising some money through donations.
During the time I worked with the Child Advocacy Center, I also learned how to write grants. The director of the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center even asked me to write a real (small, but still real) grant for them! Here is an excerpt of the grant I started writing.
I also posted the link to donate directly to the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center on several social media pages to try and reach more people and gather more donations. While it wasn’t as successful as the other sources I gathered donations from, it was still an excellent learning experience.
MORE RESEARCH
While I was raising money to build the kits, I started to wonder if the items that the teens picked were actually helpful in their path of recovery and healing, so I did some more research.
I found that blankets were very helpful in providing comfort, especially in psychological distress. I also found that Zen coloring books helped promote mindfulness, which is a tool that helps alleviate anxiety and stress, along with helping participants stay present and avoid negative mental spirals. Journaling was proven to help people process their feelings and help them process traumatic experiences. Chocolate was found to boost one’s mood, even if it was only for a short period of time. Mint wasn’t directly proven to boost mood or help with psychological distress, but according to researchers, they were hopeful that a link could be found one day. Stress balls were found to help alleviate stress.
While I didn’t find anything concrete about water bottles, I know it is a trend right now to decorate one’s water bottle. I also know that individuality and expressing oneself is very helpful for teens to feel like they have more control over their lives, which I imagine is helpful for them to feel like they have control over their healing.
CURRENT ACTIONS
While you are reading this post (at least, before the end of the Spring 2025 semester), I am purchasing items for the kits and I am also putting them together, ready to be distributed.
I am also still trying to gather more donations to leave the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center with after I am done with this project, so that they can have more funding to build more kits. I am finalizing one more fundraiser to also raise more money for the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center, in order to fund more comfort kits for teens.
The grant I wrote is still in review by the director of the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center. Once it is approved, I will be submitting it to the company in order to continue funding comfort kits for teens.
While the time I have left is limited, I want to make sure to give the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center as many resources as possible to keep this project going in order to make a bigger positive impact for the community.
OVERALL
It was an absolute pleasure to work with the Upper Valley Child Advocacy Center to help them help our community, and to use my communication skills that I have gained over the semesters I’ve attended at BYU-Idaho.
Senior Project Presentation