High school student Grayson Herr was trying to think of ideas for his Eagle Scout project when he came across an article about foster kids who had to move their belongings from home to home in plastic garbage bags.
“Foster children, when they’re taken from their homes, they’re often just given a trash bag or a box to put all their stuff in,” Herr said. “I was thinking to myself, when you give them a trash bag, you’re just saying that they are trash.”
Herr, a rising senior at Marist High School and a parishioner of Christ the King Catholic Church, ran a donation drive to collect luggage for foster children.
“They’re already in a bad situation, and now you are just giving them, like, a five cent bag to put their whole world into,” Herr said. “I was just shocked by that.”
His goal was to collect 150 to 200 pieces of luggage. But on Thursday, with three days remaining in the drive, he had collected about 170, and was thinking about raising the goal to 200 to 250.
“I haven’t counted it exactly, but we’ve been kind of doing it, like, by tens,” said Herr. The collected luggage includes roller bags, duffel bags, suitcases and backpacks.
For foster children, having proper luggage to move their belongings in offers “dignity and respect during difficult transitions between homes,” Susan Thomas of the Archdiocese of Chicago said in a news release about Herr’s project.
The luggage drive was set to culminate over the weekend, ending on Sunday, with Herr coordinating with Christ the King to make the donation ask at weekend masses.
“I’m going to be at all the masses on this weekend,” Herr said. “People can drop off their luggage at the rectory, like during the rectory hours, or they can give it to me directly on the day of Mass.”
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The drive is benefiting Lutheran Child and Family Services in Joliet. Because of Scout rules, Herr said, he can’t accept monetary donations directly.
Instead, people who don’t have luggage to donate but want to support the drive can donate money to Lutheran Child and Family Services online at lcfs.org, even after the physical luggage drive ends, and dedicate their donations as being for Grayson Herr’s Eagle Scout project, he said.
The project is part of Herr’s attempt to become an Eagle Scout, the highest rank available in Scouting America. In addition to completing a service project, prospective Eagle Scouts also need to meet several other requirements, including earning 21 merit badges and writing a letter about their life purpose, Herr said.
On pitching the idea to his parents, Herr found out that his mother had also held a similar donation drive when he was much younger.
“It was like a full circle moment, there,” Herr said.