By Kenney Kost/ne news editor
NE student Lauren Babits leads by example, attending college, working part time and running her own nonprofit organization People Over Poverty.
Babits is a second-year nursing major who says helping people is of the utmost importance to her. In early 2011, she started speaking to Nicole Nunn, a co-worker, about helping the community, and by June 2011, the two of them and Lindsay Paramore started People Over Poverty.
“I met Lauren when she began working with me at Buca Di Beppo in Southlake,” Nunn said. “My initial reaction to her proposal was excitement. I was ecstatic to work with her to gather necessities and work directly with communities and families in need of our help.”
Babits, Nunn and Paramore work together to collect purchased or donated items such as nonperishable food items, bottled water, hygiene products, etc. from people all over the community.
“Pretty much everything a person needs to get through a normal day,” Babits said. “We then separate these items into backpacks that we call our care packages and distribute them to the homeless, other nonprofits and homeless shelters.”
As far as the challenge, Babits said it is definitely tougher than she had anticipated simply because she has so much to do within the organization.
“There are so many things to keep up with,” she said. “But when it comes to reaching out to people and trying to get them to listen to your cause, that’s the hardest part.”
Currently, the organization has been run completely off-campus, according to Babits, but she has hopes of bringing it on campus to help spread the word. Some of its recent work in the community is helping families affected by the Grapevine fires.
“Helping the families in Grapevine was such a rewarding experience for the organization,” Nunn said.
As for what prompted her to start the organization, Babits said the answer was simple.
“Being able to reach out and help people has always been something that is important to me,” she said. “I believe that we are all put on this earth to help our brothers and sisters that are in need. We are strictly related just by being human, and I could not sit around and watch another human being suffer.”
