As students at the University of Kentucky, we learn many life skills and create the best versions of ourselves. While being a college student is very time consuming, it is important to prioritize our time. With that being said, the city of Lexington is a beautiful city that I was blessed to be raised in, and just like any city, needs support from the community.
In this post, I will shine a light on one of my favorite ways to give back to the city of Lexington.
While attending the University of Kentucky, I realized the value of giving back to this community any way I could. Luckily, I followed an amazing woman, Candis Morgan, and interviewed her about all of her community involvement.
Candis is a mother of 3 beautiful babies, she focuses on benefiting the youth and families of Lexington, she is 24 years old, and she uses her large social media following to make a positive impact. She is a busy woman but was able to sit down with me along with her assistant, Tiphani Fredrick, for an interview about her upcoming Easter Basket Drive.
Candis Morgan is not new to community event planning and charity driving. My first question was for her to list all her accomplishments within the community which include:
2017: Kid’s prom with over 250 children in attendance
2017: Halloween bash with 150 children
2019: Thanksgiving food drive which fed over 350 families
2019: Winter Warm drive which kept 400 people warm this winter,
2019: Toy drive for Christmas time
Not only did she organize and raise the funds for the products needed for each drive or event, but she also came out of her own pocket for taxes, the volunteer parties, and the events she coordinated in 2017.
Tiphani Fredrick told Candis at the Thanksgiving Food drive that they should start an Easter basket drive. When I asked this very sweet young woman why she thought of this idea, she said she wanted to bring Easter baskets to children in the children’s hospital in order to ease the stress off parents and sick children.
Tiphani compared the satisfaction she received by passing out winter warm packages to homeless people as the same feeling she hopes to receive when she and others deliver the baskets to the children. The Easter baskets include eggs, some toys, and candy.
I was able to see just how the two have collected after only one week.
Overall, I found out a great deal of information surrounding the community and how these two women are uniting the community to make a difference. My goal is to bridge the gap between UK and Lexington, as Candis refers to UK as the “heart of Lexington."
The volunteer party for the Easter Basket drive is unfortunately canceled due to the spread of the Coronavirus, but Candis sent me her CashApp username and other information. If you’d like to donate, please look at the attached photos for more details. Also, look out for future posts surrounding the positive actions that Candis and Tiphani are making in the community.
After I attended and donated to all three of her drives in 2019 and learned a great deal about the community. Not only did this help bring impact to people in the community, but it impacted my perspective on giving back and being grateful for the life I live. The purpose of this post is to get the students at UK more involved in the community, even if that just means donating some funds If you’re unable to give any of your time. Although, an unknown sum of students do not plan to stay in Lexington after they graduate, it can be rewarding to say you left the city better than you found it.