Renn Duffey for Your experience with ThinkGive

Speaker: Renn Duffey

Renn Duffey: Many of the youth that we serve benefit greatly from having access to different stories. And while a lot of our stories are told through either videos or personal lived experiences, many of our children connect better with just being able to read and looking through each of the pages. So having a wide range of books, help connect better with our students.

Renn Duffey: ThinkGive has immensely benefited our organization and our classroom dynamic, both by providing a very safe and encouraging environment for youth of all ages to be able to connect and talk about how to build kindness into the world around them. And also by having such a well designed and well thought out curriculum that it is easy for all of our different educators to access and connect with kids.

Renn Duffey: One of our students began in our ThinkGive programming all the way back in winter and fall of this year. And when he initially started, he was much more reserved, much more quiet, kind of stuck to himself. But as the program wore on and as he kind of grew into it, you could see this confidence really growing in him. He felt much more able and willing to share stories or give his opinion. He started reading from the board more often. And most importantly, when we got to our most recent season, we had our Give an Invitation day where we asked our kids to bring a couple of their friends to the program for a single day. And he was so absolutely excited to bring his friends and show them around. When they came in, he gave them a tour of the building, talked about ThinkGive. He said how great this entire program was and it was just very exciting to watch as he grew into himself and grew into what his full potential can really be.