Hi, I'm Mari. I am 18 years old and a kid from Flint, MI. The world more commonly knows me as Little Miss Flint, even though I'm not that little anymore.

Since I was 8 years old, I have hosted several events for Flint area kids, including events for Back to School, Christmas, Halloween, and Easter, on top of my ongoing book drive and other projects I do for the community. Last year we celebrated my 10th annual Christmas toy giveaway. My events focus on the kids and making sure they have not only what they need, but a ton of cool extras as well. If I dream it up, we figure out how to do it. This is something I love doing and have spent over half my life serving my community.

And while my events draw thousands of people, I have learned that some of the most valuable outreach we do is the outreach that comes directly to the kids. Not everyone can get out to events and some people need the resources to come to them. While assisting with some homeless outreach we have found there are dozens of kids that need support above what we usually offer with our events.

For the past 2.5 years we have been making snack bags and meal kits for the local kids in our neighborhood after finding out there were so many kids that were stealing food from the local family dollar because they were hungry. We can see anywhere from 30-60 kids daily coming by for snack bags, and around 15-25 needing meal kits. We have given out thousands of those bags to local kids since we started this project and have no plans to stop.

So my summer project this year is

-Continuing #OpSnack and expanding it to cover even more kids

-Bikes, we have about 20 kids that we serve locally that don't have a bike or a scooter, we want to gift these kids these items.

-Buying a deep freezer and stocking it with ice cream from the same supplier that supplies the ice cream trucks.

-Purchasing a large inflatable water slide (lots of kids in my neighborhood don't get to get out to go places like waterparks or to the beach, so I want to bring some summer fun directly to them

-We have about 20 kids that are living in a motel that could use some basic needs(sneakers, clothes that fit, hygiene items) and some fun stuff as well (scooters, hot wheels cars, barbie dolls, books, craft kits, etc)

-to cover rent on the Team Mari storage unit over the summer